Four people were arrested Monday in the death of a man who was found face-down in a ditch on a dead-end road in mid-November, a police spokesman said.
A woman on her way to church on Nov. 18 saw Bobby Joe Young Jr., 29, near Loretto Lane in southwest Little Rock, according to a 911 call recording. Officers said Young was dead and cold to the touch, indicating he may have been in the ditch for several hours, Little Rock police spokesman Lt. Michael Ford said at the scene in November.
Officers arrested Dustin Brewer, 21; Joseph Knox, 17; and Addison Clare Reese, 20, on charges of capital murder, and Tyler Jordan, 17, on a charge of tampering with evidence, spokesman officer Eric Barnes said Tuesday. All four suspects were in the Pulaski County jail with no bail set as of Tuesday evening.
Little information about the arrests or what led officers to the suspects was immediately released, and a district court clerk said Tuesday that warrants for the arrests were sealed.
The two 17-year-olds, Knox and Jordan, will be charged as adults, Barnes said. The U.S. Marshals Office assisted in the arrests, Barnes said.
Brewer and Knox were arrested at the Little Rock Police Department's 12th Street Station, indicating officers had taken them in for questioning before officially charging them, according to arrest reports.
Young's death came at the end of one of the most violent weekends in Little Rock this year, with five homicides in approximately 53 hours. Young was killed a day after three young people were slain in a car on West 14th Street and a man was gunned down in his doorway on West 17th Street.
Loretto Lane, where Young's body was found, is a dead-end road just north of Interstate 30. Tall oak trees loom over the narrow road, and from Mabelvale Pike, the street appears uninhabited.
"I was going to church and there's a man laying face down in our gully and on the street," the 911 caller said in a recording. "He's not moving."
Young was wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and jeans when the woman saw him, according to the recording. In an interview the woman, who asked not to be identified, said her husband woke in the middle of the night after hearing a loud noise, but did not know what it was and went back to sleep.
Whether Young was shot on Loretto Lane or whether his body was left there after being shot elsewhere was not released.
Brewer, an Alexander resident, has been arrested multiple times in Saline County on drug charges, according to court documents.
Brewer was arrested on Sept. 29 after officers found more than a pound of marijuana in his possession during a traffic stop in Saline County, according to an officer's summary report. The case is still open and Brewer has not entered a plea.
In the summary report, the officer said Brewer is "known to continue to be in possession of and sell large quantities of various illegal substances."
Brewer negotiated a guilty plea for a charge of possession of a controlled substance on Oct. 4 in Saline County and was sentenced to 12 months' probation, court documents show.
Brewer also negotiated a guilty plea for possession of a controlled substance with purpose to deliver on July 13 in Saline County.
Two first-degree terroristic threatening charges from an incident in August 2017 were listed earlier this year as nolle prosequi -- meaning the state is no longer prosecuting. On Aug. 21, 2017, Brewer threatened to kill his ex-girlfriend and pointed a black semi-automatic handgun at her and a friend, according to the officer's report. The woman later requested a restraining order against Brewer.
Reese, a Benton resident, negotiated a guilty plea on June 15 for a charge of theft of property after cashing a check that was stolen from a friend's parent's home, court documents show. Reese was sentenced to 12 months' probation and had no other criminal record before the capital murder charge was filed Tuesday.
Jordan and Knox, both juveniles, had no previous adult charges.
Metro on 12/12/2018