Bail set at $1M for North Little Rock suspect in rapes, attacks

22-year-old called flight risk

David Lee Jones
David Lee Jones

Pulaski County Circuit Judge Leon Johnson on Thursday set bail at $1 million for a 22-year-old North Little Rock man facing 23 felony charges over accusations he is responsible for six attacks on women. The charges include four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape.

The amount is a reduction from David Lee Jones Jr.’s original $4 million bail but still 20 times more than the $50,000 his lawyer had requested.

Most murderers don’t have bail that high, defense attorney Ron Davis said. Bail is only supposed to serve as a financial guarantee that the defendant will show up for court, and it’s not to be used to punish a suspect, Davis said.

Jones is charged with two counts of aggravated assault, three counts each of rape, aggravated robbery and theft, four counts of kidnapping and six counts of terroristic threatening. He faces a potential life sentence.

He has been jailed about 9 ½ months since his June 10 arrest, a day after, prosecutors say, he ambushed a woman inside an abandoned house next door to his home on Virginia Drive.

The 36-year-old woman was grabbed from behind; her assailant put a pistol to her head and threatened to kill her, deputy prosecutor Jeanna Sherrill told the judge at Thursday’s hearing.

But the woman was able to struggle from her assailant and run as the man shot at her, Sherrill said.

The woman had gone to the house to meet a man for a sexual encounter arranged through Backpage.com, the prosecutor said. She left her backpack when she ran, and police later found it in Jones’ home. The woman came forward after hearing about Jones’ arrest and recognizing his picture, the prosecutor said.

Sherrill argued that Jones, who did not testify, is a flight risk who evaded Texas authorities for months before being arrested and extradited to that state for a 2011 juvenile residential burglary conviction in Dallas. She said he spent almost three years in juvenile incarceration until he was released on his 19th birthday.

Jones also has juvenile convictions for minor in possession of a firearm in 2009 and aggravated assault, reduced from aggravated robbery, in 2012, stemming from separate arrests in Pulaski County, she said.

The first attack police associated with Jones came about 2 a.m. April 11, when a 19-year-old woman reported she’d been raped by an assailant who attacked her in the 4900 block of Allen Street while she was walking home from her Wendy’s restaurant shift and listening to music through headphones.

The rapist approached her from behind, grabbed her by her hair and put a gun to her head, the prosecutor said. The man threatened to kill her if she did not do what he told her. He pulled her into some woods and forced her to perform oral sex. He left, stealing her wallet and cell phone, after telling her to count down from 300 before leaving, Sherill said.

The woman was able to direct police to where she’d been attacked, and investigators found her headphones and some sugar packets she had dropped from her pockets, the prosecutor told the judge.

Five days later, a 38-year-old woman told police she was jogging on the Five Mile Creek Trail when she came upon a man who suddenly punched her, stuck a gun in her back and dragged her into the woods.

The assailant told her he’d kill her if she resisted, Sherrill said. But she grabbed him by the groin and squeezed as hard as she could, prompting him to release her.

Someone else on the trail saw the man and was able to identify Jones from a police photo lineup, the prosecutor said.

But Jones was not a suspect until after the June 6 rape of a 33-year-old woman who was ambushed by a gunman hiding in the back seat of her car, Sherrill told the judge. She’d finished doing her laundry at the Fun Wash, 4804 John F. Kennedy Boulevard, shortly before 5 p.m. when she got into her car.

The attacker, whose face was covered, forced her to drive somewhere and park, then made her perform oral sex, before stealing the $800 she had and her checkbook.

Police got Jones’ DNA from a pink shirt the woman used to wipe her mouth, Sherrill said.

The DNA also matched genetic material found on the clothes of the Wendy’s worker in April, she told the judge.

The prosecutor said Jones subsequently told detective Julie Eckert that he’d had consensual sexual encounters with the Wendy’s worker and admitted to assaulting the creek trail jogger.

Jones also identified himself as the assailant of two women on March 25, 2017, outside the now-closed Fox & Hound bar in the Lakewood Village shopping center on McCain Boulevard the prosecutor said.

The women told investigators they’d been sitting in a car when a man came up, put something against the head of the driver and said he’d kill her if they didn’t cooperate. When one of the women opened the car door for the man to get in, they saw he had been using a bottle, not a gun, so they ran into the restaurant and called police.

Jones also told police he’d had a consensual sexual encounter with a woman at a Lynn Lane home in August 2016 and that he’d stolen her phone, Sherrill said. He identified the woman by name but the subsequent investigation led detectives to a woman with a similar name and features who said she’d been raped on Aug. 1, 2016, but had never reported it, the prosecutor said.

The 24-year-old said she’d been assaulted at an empty house at Lynn Lane and 44th streets where she’d gone for an arranged sexual encounter with a stranger, the prosecutor told the judge. An associate who came to pick her up from the house told police she was hysterical when he arrived.

The location of the house is significant because Jones used to live on Lynn Lane, Sherrill said.

When he was arrested last, Jones was already awaiting trial on a residential burglary charge. According to arrest reports, Jones and another man were arrested in July 2016 — three days before Jones’ 20th birthday — by police responding to a home alarm at a Moss Street house, just after sunrise.

Officers arrived to see two men in the carport who ran into the house when they saw the police. The two men were taken into custody without incident.

Jones’ co-defendant, 22-year-old Devante Lamar Williams, is scheduled to stand trial in May.

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