For abuse of 3-year-old boy, Little Rock parolee gets 18-year term

Carl Robert Ridder is shown in this April 2017 mug shot
Carl Robert Ridder is shown in this April 2017 mug shot

About 14 months after Little Rock police found a battered 3-year-old boy left alone in a clothes hamper inside a closet in his mother's apartment, the woman's parolee boyfriend was sentenced Monday to follow her to prison.

Carl Robert Ridder, a 34-year-old father of two, pleaded guilty Monday to first-degree domestic battering for inflicting "serious physical injury" on the toddler in March 2016, deputy prosecutor Erin Driver said.

Under the plea arrangement negotiated by attorney Joey Joslin, Ridder accepted an 18-year prison term from Pulaski County Circuit Judge Herb Wright.

The boy's mother, Rebecca Ann Gaston, 30, formerly of Conway pleaded no contest in December to permitting child abuse. She received a five-year prison sentence conditioned upon her testifying against Ridder. Prison records show she can apply for parole next month. She had faced up to 20 years.

Court records show Gaston admitted to trying to cover up what Ridder had done when she was arrested. She told detectives that she was present when Ridder beat the boy after the child accidentally urinated on Ridder's leg while trying to use the toilet at the apartment the couple shared at the Ridgecrest Apartments, 1900 Reservoir Road.

Gaston was not immediately forthcoming with police, court records show. Officers Kevin Ward and Nathan Herpin were at the apartments March 10, 2016, to investigate an anonymous tip about a disturbance involving a child at the apartment.

No one was home, but the officers learned from a neighbor that the tenants had left on foot.

Ward and Herpin searched the area and located Gaston and Ridder about a quarter-mile away walking with Gaston's toddler daughter. The little girl was "healthy and happy," while Ridder told officers that he was just a friend walking a mother and daughter to the store. He told Gaston he'd meet her back at her apartment and left.

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Questioned about whether she had any other children, Gaston said she had a son but the boy was with his father. The officers followed her back to her apartment and got her permission to search it, where they discovered the boy in the hamper in a closed closet.

He was in the fetal position with "multiple visible injuries," court filings show. Both the boy and his sister were taken by ambulance to Arkansas Children's Hospital.

Driver said Monday that the boy was expected to fully recover.

Gaston was arrested just before 3 p.m. the day of the child's beating. Police also discovered that she was carrying a glass pipe and suspected marijuana.

She told police that she was present when Ridder beat the boy, describing how the man had gotten angry when her son missed the toilet. Gaston said she and Ridder left the boy behind while they went to a friend's house.

Ridder was arrested later that day after police heard he'd returned to the area. Officer David Wilson arrested him about three hours after arresting Gaston. Wilson pulled over a white Honda Accord and found Ridder in the back seat. Ridder's clothes were wet and covered with leaves and dirt, according to an arrest report.

He denied wrongdoing, but in an interview with detectives, he could not provide a clear account of what he'd done that day.

Monday's prison sentence is Ridder's fourth. He has convictions for robbery and drugs in 2005 in Pulaski County. He was sentenced to the penitentiary twice on convictions from Jefferson County for theft and commercial burglary in 2011 and in 2014 for fleeing and theft by receiving.

Gaston does not appear to have a criminal record, but court records show the boy's father, Mikel Neil Vaughn, 30, of Conway pleaded guilty in Faulkner County District Court in April 2015 to misdemeanor domestic battering, in which Gaston was the victim.

Metro on 05/09/2017

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