Pulaski County Circuit Judge Barry Sims on Monday set a Nov. 3 date for the first-degree murder trial of a Little Rock man who police say opened fire on a car full of teenage pranksters, killing one of them on Valentine's Day in 2014.
The judge scheduled the trial after a mental evaluation by state doctors determined Willie James Noble, 50, is competent to stand trial.
He has said the shooting was accidental and that the girl, 15-year-old Adrian Broadway, was a friend of his youngest son who had visited their home before.
Doctors reported that Noble has no mental illness and diagnosed the married father of four with moderate "Major Depressive Disorder," according to the report presented Monday to the judge. The condition was attributed to his legal situation.
Noble was arrested about 30 minutes after Broadway, a cheerleader enrolled in college preparatory courses at McClellan High School, died in the hospital from gunshot wounds, court records show.
According to the mental evaluation, Noble told doctors that his 17-year-old son had just gotten home around midnight on Feb. 14, 2014, when the family dog began barking aggressively. Noble said he and the teenager went outside and found a bag of leaves on their cars.
Noble said he told his son they would wait inside for the perpetrators to return, and he heard a car drive by a short time later, according to the report.
He said that when he heard the car a second time, it had stopped behind the family's cars, someone got out and he ran out of his home.
"I shot. I wasn't aiming at the car," he told doctors. "As I shot, the car went up two houses, they cut the headlights off. And at that time, I thought I just scared the heck out of them whoever it was. So I just go into the house and go to bed. I didn't think I hit them."
Eggs and mayonnaise had been smeared on his vehicles, he said.
Noble told doctors he didn't mean to hurt anyone, adding that if he had known there were children in the car, he would not have shot at them.
"[I] was hoping they would get scared and leave. If I knew it was kids, I would have never did it. I would never have gone outside. I would never have had that gun in my hands," he said. "I just was firing the gun to get them away from my property. I thought I must have scared the s*** out of them."
Noble said all he could see was someone getting out of the car when he opened fire. He said he was afraid.
"It was dark out there, you couldn't see. I didn't know what was going on," Noble said, according to the report. "You see people jump out of cars and start spraying [bullets]. I thought, 'My family's in here. My wife and sons were in the house.' I felt like I was protecting myself."
Noble told doctors he was surprised when police went to his home about 21/2 hours after the shooting, saying he knew that randomly firing a gun was illegal but thought at the time his actions had been justified.
Police found the mortally wounded girl in the passenger seat of a white Hyundai Sonata in the parking lot of the Kum & Go convenience store on Baseline Road, where the car's driver, Kristopher Deshone Nelson, now 19, had taken the teen seeking help.
According to police reports, Nelson told investigators he'd driven Broadway and four others to a Skylark Drive home, where they had put leaves and toilet paper on the cars, according to police reports.
They left the residence but decided to go back and throw eggs, Nelson told police. They sat in the car for a couple of minutes with the headlights out and the music turned low while they decided who would throw the eggs, Nelson said, according to the report.
He said Broadway got out of the passenger seat with two eggs and a roll of toilet paper when he heard shots and bullets striking his vehicle.
He stopped at a nearby stop sign to see if everyone was all right when the teens discovered that Broadway had been shot in the head. She died about 21/2 hours later.
Noble is also charged with six counts of committing a terroristic act, with each representing one of the other teens in the car: Nelson, the driver; and passengers Derrika Garrett, Kortazha Williams, Tanesha Lewis, Joshua Griffin and Jocelyn Jackson, who ranged in age from 14 to 17 at the time.
Metro on 06/30/2015