JONESBORO -- Frustrated over his inability to get disability benefits from an accident he suffered while taking a truck-driving course at Arkansas State University's Newport campus in 2012, Brad Kenneth Bartelt drove onto the ASU-Jonesboro campus Dec. 10. He had with him a shotgun and his will.
Bartelt expected to die that day, he told Jonesboro police detectives after he was arrested.
During the third day of Bartelt's trial in Craighead County Circuit Court on Wednesday, prosecutors played a 30-minute segment of a taped interview that detectives conducted with Bartelt.
Bartelt, 48, is charged with five counts of aggravated assault and one count each of making a terroristic threat and terroristic threatening. Bartelt's defense to the charges is that he intended to harm only himself Dec. 10 and posed no threat to anyone else.
In the taped interview, shown to the jury of six men and six women Wednesday afternoon, Jonesboro Police Department detective Mike Branscum asked Bartelt what his goal was when he held police at bay on the Jonesboro campus for about an hour and a half.
"I wanted to get the story out," Bartelt told Branscum. "I've got no help. None. It's been a struggle."
Bartelt was injured in 2012 while enrolled in a truck-driving course at the Newport campus. Police said another driver had gotten a barrel lodged underneath a truck, and Bartelt tried to pull the barrel from beneath the vehicle. The truck moved forward, and Bartelt was dragged about 20 feet.
Bartelt was critically injured and spent 28 days in a Memphis hospital, said defense attorney Chet Dunlap of Trumann.
After three years of trying to get financial assistance, Bartlelt told Branscum in the taped interview that he decided to drive to the Jonesboro campus and draw attention to his plight.
He parked his pickup in front of the Carl R. Reng student union center, and at times pointed a 12-gauge shotgun at his chin. Bartelt asked police to "look at the notebook" that he placed on a concrete picnic table near his truck.
The notebook contained his Social Security card, medical reports from his accident and a will that left his possessions to family members.
It also contained the poem "A Bend in the Road" by Helen Steiner Rice, which included the lines, "When we feel we have nothing left to give and we are sure that the song has ended ... Where can we go to find the strength to valiantly keep on trying."
The poem suggests people turn to God for help.
"I didn't want to hurt anybody," Bartelt said in the interview with the detective. "It's a sin to kill someone else. I wanted to be dead."
Bartelt, wearing a gray shirt and camouflage pants during the interview, rocked constantly in the video and often wiped away tears.
He told Branscum that the three years he endured after his accident were difficult.
"All that darkness," he said. "I'd rather have died under that truck."
Bartelt told Branscum that he thought ASU was "covering up" his accident and that university officials wanted Bartelt dead so he wouldn't tell others about his injuries and his difficulty getting assistance. He said he wanted others to know about it so they would not "send their kids or grandkids" to the university system.
"He reached the end of his rope," Branscum testified Wednesday afternoon.
Earlier Wednesday, Dunlap questioned an ASU police officer's decision to initiate an active-shooter alert on the Jonesboro campus Dec. 10, arguing that doing so didn't follow the university's policy.
The policy states that such alerts are activated when an "individual is actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people."
"Brad Bartelt hadn't killed anyone," Dunlap told Lt. Bobby Duff, who along with ASU University Police Capt. Jarrod Long decided to activate the alert.
"I didn't know that at the time," Duff replied. "There were too many unknowns and a definite possibility for the loss of life. We had to act accordingly," Duff said.
At times Dunlap's exchange with Duff became animated, with Dunlap raising his voice and interrupting the officer.
Dunlap's exchange with Duff angered a courthouse employee who made comments on her Facebook page Wednesday afternoon about how the defense attorney did not respect law enforcement officers.
On the basis of that post, Dunlap asked for a mistrial, saying he worried that jurors may have seen it during a lunch break.
"I was very adamant in my cross-examination of [Duff]," Dunlap said. "[The employee] sat in the courtroom with tears of sympathy in her eyes.
"While I was up here vigorously attacking [Duff's] credibility, she was sitting there with tears. It had to prejudice the jury. There is no way Brad Bartelt can get a fair trial."
Circuit Judge Tommy Fowler questioned each juror to determine if any had seen the Facebook message. When each denied seeing the post, Fowler rejected Dunlap's request for a mistrial.
Also Wednesday, jurors saw an hour-and-a-half video taken from Jonesboro Police Chief Rick Elliott's dashboard camera that showed Bartelt's pickup parked on the ASU campus and officers' attempts to negotiate with Bartelt.
The chief testified that he didn't see Bartelt point his shotgun at officers but that Bartelt often held it to his own chin.
At times, Bartelt stepped out of his truck and pointed his weapon at a large propane tank that sat in the pickup bed, Elliott said. The chief testified that he feared that Bartelt might shoot it, causing an explosion.
The state is expected to rest its case today.
Bartelt said he will testify once the defense presents its case, and he hopes the trial will conclude Friday.
A Section on 08/25/2016