A 23-year-old man accused of raping and chasing a woman into a west Little Rock utility substation, where she suffered electrical burns, was released from jail Wednesday night after his bail was reduced to $50,000.
Courvoisiea Allen of Little Rock had been jailed 100 days when he made bond. He had been held since his October arrest about two weeks after police found the seriously injured 25-year-old woman in the parking lot of the HomeGoods store at the Promenade on Chenal shopping center.
Police say she reeked of burned flesh when she approached a motorist waiting for the store to open and begged the driver to call for help.
The woman told police she'd been raped, chased and attacked by a man who had given her a ride from the parking lot of the Wal-Mart at Arkansas 10 and Chenal Parkway.
She said the man, who had given her rides before, on this night had forced her to perform oral sex. She said she'd jumped from the car when it slowed down for a stop sign.
To get away from him, she said, she ran into the woods with him following. She ultimately climbed the fence around Entergy's Kanis Road substation, then climbed an electrical tower when the man continued to pursue her.
She was severely shocked on the tower and caused a 3:30 a.m. electrical failure that affected 8,000 homes and took power workers about six hours to repair.
She suffered electrical burns over 40 percent of her body and spent a month at the Arkansas Children's Hospital burn unit, according to testimony. She has also undergone a week of skin grafts, police say.
Allen's bail was set at $500,000 when he was arrested, but Judge Leon Johnson reduced it Wednesday after defense attorney Willard Proctor questioned the legality of police tactics, challenged the sufficiency of the evidence and disputed the plausibility of the woman's version of events at the hour-long hearing.
Bail is a financial guarantee that a defendant will follow court orders and attend all hearings, and Proctor said that $500,000 was too expensive for Allen and his family. He asked for $25,000 bail for Allen, who did not testify.
Proctor told the judge his client deserved a significant reduction in bail because there's no DNA evidence to link Allen to the woman and the defendant has never been in trouble with the law before.
Allen has always had a job, even dropping out of Baptist College so he could work to provide for his 2-year-old daughter, Allen's father, 67-year-old Albert Morgan Jr., and mother, Melissaa Shantel Allen, 43, testified. They both told the judge they've never known him to carry a gun or be violent.
The woman, who suffered burns over 40 percent of her body, was able to pick Allen's photograph out of a police lineup as her assailant, but Proctor questioned whether investigators had improperly prompted her to choose his client.
The best evidence police have is the "hay-like" grass police found in the driver-side floorboard of Allen's car the day after police found the woman, Proctor told the judge.
Police say it's not a typical grass, but matches the kind at the power substation.
Proctor told the judge that police have yet to confirm any unique qualities to the grass that could conclusively tie it to the substation area. Testing at the Arkansas Crime Laboratory is pending.
Proctor also pointed to discrepancies in her story. She first told police that her assailant had pulled a gun on her, but later told detectives he had used a knife, the attorney said. Her account of being forced to perform oral sex while her assailant was driving also is questionable, he said.
For Allen to be her attacker, the defendant would have had to have done everything he's accused of -- driving her down Chenal Parkway, raping her, chasing her to the substation on Kanis Road and cutting her with a knife -- all within the space of his lunch hour from Wal-Mart, where he's worked for about a year, Proctor said.
The statement she gave police about her assailant grabbing her leg while she was climbing the electrical tower is also dubious, Proctor told the judge. He questioned how any attacker holding her leg would not have received the same debilitating shock she suffered.
Deputy prosecutor Jayme Butts-Hall asked the judge to maintain a substantial bail for Allen, citing police testimony about discrepancies in his version of events to detectives.
Police were able to focus on Allen so quickly because the woman knew him to work at that Wal-Mart, the detective said. Police have video from the store of him driving out of the parking lot and photographs of the woman getting into the car, detective Paige Cline told the judge.
The detective said Allen wasn't immediately arrested because she had to wait two weeks to show a police photo lineup to the woman and wanted the still-hospitalized woman clear-headed, which meant waiting until the woman was off her pain medication.
The woman told police she was at Wal-Mart because she'd just walked away from an argument with her boyfriend. She was asking people in the parking lot for rides when a man who had given her lifts before agreed to drive her, Cline said.
Metro on 01/26/2017