A 22-year-old North Little Rock man who claimed a mysterious stranger killed his girlfriend in front of him and then outran him to escape has accepted a 30-year prison sentence for her murder.
Robert Earl "Lil Fish" Burton pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, reduced from capital murder, on Thursday before Pulaski County Circuit Judge Herb Wright, according to deputy prosecutor Michael Wright.
Burton was arrested about five hours after 18-year-old Yasha Bonds was found dead in October 2016 from a gunshot to the head. She was found on the ground in front of Burton's grandmother's apartment at Windemere Hills, the North Little Rock Housing Authority complex on Flora Street.
Burton told police he was walking toward Bonds when he saw her talking to a man on his grandmother's porch. The stranger suddenly pulled a gun, shot her, then ran, Burton said in his first statement to police. Burton said he chased the man, but the stranger got into a car that sped away.
Police detective Michael Gibbons testified that Burton wasn't immediately considered a suspect, but that investigators believed he was not being truthful. Detectives could see that Burton knew more than he was telling but attributed his lack of candor to fear for his own safety, Gibbons told the judge at a recent hearing.
Burton's story conflicted with Burton's grandmother's account, not enough to make the detective believe he was responsible for the killing, but significantly enough to press Burton to clear up those discrepancies, Gibbons said.
As questioning continued, Burton said he had shot Bonds accidentally, then admitted he had shot the woman during an argument, the detective testified.
Burton said he and Bonds had been sitting together on the porch when she started complaining to him about the number of other women he was involved with.
Burton told police he went inside and put his gun in his pocket. When he went back outside with Bonds, she continued to scold him, so Bonds shot her because he wanted to make her shut up, he told police.
He threw the gun in a nearby vacant lot and called 911, telling dispatchers and then police that a stranger shot Bonds and ran off.
Burton's guilty plea came one day after the judge denied his attorneys' motion to suppress his statement on the grounds that Burton is too intellectually disabled to have knowingly waived his constitutional right to a lawyer.
Metro on 08/21/2018