A North Little Rock teenager whom prosecutors called a predator that picked the wrong prey was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in prison for armed robbery.
The 10-year sentence was the minimum available to the nine-woman, three-man jury that found Anthony Ray White III, 19, guilty of aggravated robbery and theft by threat after a two-day trial before Pulaski County Circuit Judge Leon Johnson.
White will have to serve at least seven years before he can apply for parole. The charges carried a potential life sentence.
White was 17 in January 2015 when he ambushed Tonya Rochelle Foster in the driveway of her North Little Rock home, according to testimony.
Foster, 44, said White ran up to her car, stuck a pistol in her side and snatched her wallet out of her lap as she was preparing to hand a fried-chicken dinner through her car window to her 9-year-old son. White then ran to a waiting car that sped off, she said.
But White and his getaway driver had picked the wrong victim, deputy prosecutor Amanda Fields told jurors.
"Anthony White did not realize what a strong woman Tonya Foster is," Fields said in her closing statement.
The single mother of two gave chase in her own car, a high-speed pursuit over 5 miles across the river into Little Rock. She called 911 and stayed on the phone with dispatchers, giving police a turn-by-turn description of the chase.
White jumped out of the car early in the pursuit, but Foster kept after the fleeing car until it stopped at a Little Rock convenience store on Fourche Dam Pike, where she confronted the driver in the parking lot as police arrived.
Police identified the driver, but he would not be arrested until the next month, after Foster picked him out of a photo lineup.
Foster said she remembered both White and the driver because she'd had a momentary encounter with them shortly before she was robbed.
They had been in the North Little Rock gas station where she'd cashed her paycheck, she said. Then she'd had words with the driver because he'd parked too close to her car at the store, she said.
White was wearing a black hoodie with a distinctive white design when she'd seen him at the store and then again when he robbed her a few minutes later, Foster said.
Foster told jurors that she had chased the robbers partially to get her money back -- she was two weeks late with her rent at the time -- but also because she kept a special letter from her daughter in her wallet. She told jurors that she'd been carrying the letter, a description of her daughter's love and respect for her, with her every day since 2008.
White did not testify and denied being the robber in a recorded interview with police.
In that hourlong recording, played for jurors Wednesday, he told detective Gary Jones that the getaway driver, 29-year-old Cordale Kent McDaniel, was the robber who had decided to ambush Foster after they had seen her getting her $450 paycheck cashed.
Questioned about a photograph on White's Facebook page that had been uploaded the day of the robbery showing the teen brandishing $422 in cash, White said he'd earned the money from working for a friend's yard service that paid him $50 per lawn mowed.
Defense attorney Michael Kaiser asked jurors to question why Foster would chase an armed robber instead of calling the police, who had a substation nearby.
Jurors should further consider what reasons the woman might have for continuing to pursue the fleeing car even after White had gotten out of the vehicle, he said.
"Actions speak louder than words," he told jurors in his closing argument, calling her version of events "a story that defies common sense."
"Ms. Foster's actions do not make sense."
Kaiser suggested that Foster and McDaniel had colluded to frame White, but when he told jurors that McDaniel had been Foster's drug dealer, that accusation drew an objection from prosecutors and a rebuke from the judge outside the presence of the jury.
"You can't say something you don't have any basis for," a visibly angry Johnson said before telling jurors they must disregard the statement.
Prosecutors denounced the suggestion that Foster had done anything wrong, calling on jurors not to let the defense punish her for a drug addiction she overcame almost eight years ago.
Foster triumphed over her drug problem to become a hard-working mother providing a living for her two children, Fields said.
"She is doing everything right, so don't hold her past against her," Fields said.
Still pending for White is a second trial on charges of theft by receiving, fleeing and possession of drug paraphernalia stemming from his March arrest in North Little Rock, where police say he was arrested after leading officers in a car chase. A stolen gun and drug paraphernalia were found in the vehicle he was driving, police said.
McDaniel, also charged with aggravated robbery and theft, is scheduled to appear in court later this month to determine when he will stand trial.
Metro on 12/09/2016