Gas Pump Shooting, A Corndog Defense And A Grocery That Couldn’t Keep Its Coolers Cold: Arkansas Court Of Appeals Rulings

LITTLE ROCK — A Bentonville man who shot at a motorcyclist’s bike after a fight over a gas pump will serve his 12-year sentence, the Arkansas Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday in one of 11 opinions it handed down.

The court also upheld a 91-year sentence in a Conway domestic shooting, a 12-year sentence for a Little River County man who told jurors he was reaching for a dropped corndog when a trooper saw him hiding methamphetamine, and a $49,000 judgment against the owner of a building leased to reopen a grocery store in Hermitage.

Fight over a gas pump

Jason Alexander was pulling up to a pump at a Bentonville gas station on Nov. 29, 2023, when a motorcycle cut in front of him and took the pump he planned to use, according to the opinion by Judge Mike Murphy. Alexander confronted the rider and tried to mace him, and the two started fighting. A witness said the rider “decked” Alexander and put him on the ground, then Alexander “got right up,” went to his car, “came back with a gun, aimed at the motorcycle, and fired one shot.”

Alexander told police he did not even know he had been hit. “I shot his motorcycle trying to stop him because I wanted to call the police, you know?” he said, according to the opinion.

A Benton County jury convicted him of committing a terroristic act and two counts of aggravated assault, each with a firearm enhancement, and he was sentenced to 144 months. On appeal he argued the judge should have let jurors consider probation and that a state hospital mental evaluation was flawed because it did not include neuropsychological testing. The appeals court rejected all five of his arguments, noting that records he filed after trial showed he had in fact had a neuropsychological exam before trial.

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91 years in Conway shooting

The court also affirmed Timothy Darnell Allen’s 91-year sentence as a habitual offender for first-degree domestic battering, first-degree terroristic threatening and two counts of aggravated assault on a family member. A Faulkner County jury acquitted him of attempted first-degree murder.

According to the opinion by Judge Stephanie Potter Barrett, testimony at trial showed Allen pointed a gun at his girlfriend and her 7-year-old daughter during an argument at a Conway home around Christmas 2022, then shot the woman in the leg near her knee. Neighbors heard several shots and saw his green Tahoe leaving. He was arrested in West Memphis on Dec. 28, 2022, and told investigators, “If she said it, it probably happened.” The court ruled that evidence of an earlier incident, in which he stood over the woman with a gun when she tried to leave, was properly admitted.

The corndog defense

In Little River County, Arkansas State Police Trooper Zane Butler stopped Nathaniel Bearden’s pickup for speeding on Jan. 10, 2025, with snow still on the ground. Bearden kept driving, then turned onto a dirt road and “slow rolled” for more than a minute while reaching toward the console, according to the opinion by Judge Bart F. Virden. Under the trim around the gearshift was a hole cut through the floorboard. On the ground below it, the trooper found a broken glass pipe and a baggie with 0.9 grams of methamphetamine.

Bearden testified that he had stopped at an EZ Mart for a corndog, a burrito and a potato log, found the drugs in his tool bag, panicked and shoved them through the hole, and was reaching for the corndog he had dropped when the trooper saw him. “If that’s where he found it, yes, that’s mine,” he told jurors.

The jury convicted him of possession of methamphetamine, tampering with evidence and possession of paraphernalia, and he was sentenced to 12 years as a habitual offender. “The jury was not required to believe Bearden’s explanation,” the court wrote. The court affirmed but sent the case back to remove forfeiture language from his sentencing order, an error the state conceded.

Hermitage’s grocery store

After the owner of a Hermitage grocery and deli closed it in 2019 following the theft of $7,000 in lottery tickets by an employee, the town’s mayor recruited businessman Sammie Lindsey to reopen it, according to the opinion by Judge Brandon J. Harrison. The owner’s husband told Lindsey the building was “good to go” as a grocery, and Lindsey signed a two-year lease at $1,200 a month starting in November 2019.

The coolers and freezers would not stay cold. Lindsey paid for cleaners, two HVAC experts, a plumber and an electrician, but the store failed three health department inspections between October 2020 and January 2021, the opinion said. A Bradley County judge found Lindsey had been fraudulently induced to sign the lease and awarded him about $49,000. The owner, Mumtaz Mf, who represented herself at trial “not particularly assertively or well,” the court noted, lost her appeal.

Other rulings

The court also upheld a Saline County judge’s refusal to remove Steven Steck from the sex offender registry, 24 years after his Louisiana conviction, finding the judge properly concluded he still posed a threat to others. It affirmed a 10-year order of protection in Pope County and child-sex convictions out of Benton and Washington counties.