A 21-year-old man shot by Little Rock police while trying to run over one officer with a stolen car after hitting another officer has been sentenced to six years in prison.
Sentencing papers filed Friday by deputy prosecutor Sharon Strong show that Jacob Matthew Goff of North Little Rock pleaded guilty to second-degree battery, aggravated assault and theft by receiving before Pulaski County Circuit Judge Barry Sims. Each charge is a Class D felony that carries a maximum of six years in prison.
Goff, who also uses the surname Goff-Stanick, encountered police officers Cody Hall and James McConnell shortly before midnight Dec. 20 while the officers were working a special deterrence and enforcement patrol in the "documented high-crime" neighborhood of the Motel 6 at 10524 W. Markham St., which had problems with drug use and car break-ins, police reports and court records show.
An occupied white Honda Fit parked on the motel's north side drew the attention of Hall, who stopped to check out the car. The driver, later identified as Goff, and two men got out of the car as Hall approached, but the officer ordered them to get back into the car.
The officers approached the car, with Hall on the driver's side and McConnell on the passenger's side, when the driver put the car into reverse and backed into Hall's patrol car, clipping McConnell's right hand and left arm. One of the passengers got out of the back seat and surrendered.
Hall ordered the driver to stop the car and get out, but the driver drove toward him, nearly hitting him. Both officers shot the driver, and the second passenger bailed out of the car to surrender. The car stopped when it hit a fence.
The passengers told investigators that they and Goff had been sitting in the car and smoking marijuana together when police approached. Neither man was charged.
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Court filings show one bullet entered Goff's head behind the right ear and traveled downward to the left side of his jaw and nasal cavity where it lodged. Another gunshot went through the back of his right shoulder and went down the right-arm humerus bone without exiting. A third bullet hit Goff's interior right thigh and traveled up toward his buttocks where it lodged. He also had a graze wound to the right forearm.
Goff was hospitalized and then was jailed after he was released from care Jan. 4. He has been in custody ever since.
Under the plea agreement negotiated by his public defender, Amy Jackson, Goff received a concurrent six-year prison term for pleading guilty to a Class D-felony theft, reduced from a Class C felony, for stealing a ring and two decorative Japanese wood-block prints from the home of his ex-girlfriend, 32-year-old Daysha Carr, at Riverwalk Apartments, 2400 Riverfront Drive in Little Rock, on Nov. 29.
Court records say that Carr showed investigators text messages from Goff in which he admitted to stealing the prints. Investigators further discovered that Goff pawned her ring at the Braswell & Son pawnshop on West Markham Street on Dec. 10.
Court records show that Goff has been in trouble with the law previously. In November 2015, when he was 17 and living in Little Rock, Sherwood police arrested him on aggravated robbery charges over accusations that he was responsible for the October 2015 armed robbery of the Payless Tobacco store.
Goff also was charged with marijuana trafficking when he was arrested by officers who discovered he had marijuana and small plastic bags on him, records show.
The arresting officers, who had encountered Goff during a traffic stop, charged the car's driver, 31-year-old Johnathan C. Andrews of Sherwood, with felony possession of oxycodone. He subsequently pleaded guilty and was sentenced to probation.
Prosecutors authorized Goff to be charged as an adult, but the charges against him were transferred to juvenile court by Circuit Judge Leon Johnson after a March 2016 hearing.
Metro on 10/15/2019