A North Little Rock man who carjacked a 49-year-old woman outside a grocery store last May and then led police on a brief chase that ended when he jumped from the moving vehicle has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Robert Earl Harris, 19, pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery, theft and fleeing in exchange for the 10-year sentence imposed by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Cathi Compton, according to sentencing papers filed Thursday.
Under conditions of the plea agreement negotiated by deputy prosecutor Robbie Jones and public defender Matthew Ford, Harris' prison term will be followed by a five-year suspended sentence.
Harris has been jailed since his arrest, about five minutes after 41-year-old Angela Daniele Allen of Mena reported that a masked gunman had forced her out of her car outside the Value Foods in the Rose City Shopping Center, 4115 E. Broadway, and driven off with it.
Allen told investigators she was on her way to Hot Springs when she stopped at the store to buy a canned soft drink from a machine out front.
Allen said she was sitting in her black 2015 Nissan Altima when a man wearing a black hoodie and a blue surgical mask came up to her, showed her he had a gun and told her to get out of the vehicle or he'd shoot her.
Officers responding to the scene came across the Altima being driven by a blue-masked man speeding up Sycamore Street, north of 13th Street, according to an arrest report.
Police pursued the car until it slowed down, and the driver jumped out in the 600 block of West 23rd Street, leaving the moving car to hit the side of 615 W. 23rd, the home of Calvin Jackson, causing about $200 in damage, the report states.
Officers arrested the driver, identifying him as Harris, and seized a loaded pistol from the back seat of the car. Harris had an extended clip in his front left pocket that held another 26 rounds, the report states.
Asked how he came into possession of the vehicle, Harris replied "aggravatedly," explaining how he took the car from the woman after showing her he had a gun. Harris said he had come across Allen while walking from the Meadow Park area and decided that he needed to get a ride, court findings show.