A 19-year-old accused of wounding a North Little Rock man during an October drive-by shooting was involved in a nexus of gangs that contributed to significant violence in the area, police and prosecutors said Thursday.
Devonte'a Clay was arrested on drug and firearm charges in February, months after he reportedly fired a handgun at a man, according to officials. He's been held at the Pulaski County jail since, county records show.
At Thursday's bond hearing, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza refused to lower Clay's $350,000 bail and denied the defense's request to release Clay to a local drug rehabilitation program.
Piazza said he was reluctant to release the North Little Rock teenager because of Clay's "past history."
Clay has been entrenched in the juvenile or adult justice system since he was 13, prosecutors said. They also allege that he's associated with Black Disciples, a subset of the Folk Nation gang, which formed in Chicago in the 1970s and has since spread.
"We ask to keep him locked up," said Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Ashley Clancy. "We believe if he was released, violence would increase again in North Little Rock."
According to the arrest report, North Little Rock police officers noticed that Clay was driving a car with expired tags and pulled him over on Feb. 8. He reeked of marijuana, the report said. Officers found a loaded handgun under the driver's seat; a bottle of liquid codeine, a narcotic opioid painkiller; a marijuana blunt; and torn baggies during a search of his car, the report stated.
The next month, records show that Clay was charged in the October shooting on Puckett Street, a stone's throw from Glenview Elementary School.
The shooting victim told police that he was standing in the driveway of his home when Clay, from the driver's side of a vehicle, fired his handgun several times, striking the man in his right arm, according to court records. They had been arguing over money.
During Thursday's hearing, officer Ryan Davidson, an eight-year veteran of the North Little Rock Police Department, said his patrol monitored the area where Clay was arrested as part of a larger "response to rising gang violence."
Davidson is a member of the department's special enforcement team, which tracks violent offenders and gang members. The team is assigned to the federal task force assembled to investigate gang activity in the Little Rock area.
Clay's arrest, along with a series of arrests of other alleged gang affiliates around the same time, has resulted in "steeply dropped" criminal activity, Davidson testified.
Sgt. Amy Cooper, a spokesman for the department, said she couldn't immediately confirm whether the arrests Davidson mentioned were the same arrests of 40 suspected gang members rounded up in February by 250 law enforcement officers from local, state and national agencies, including North Little Rock.
During Thursday's hearing, Clancy submitted as evidence an amateur music video that depicted Clay, and others, posing with Glock pistols aimed directly into the camera.
The video showed Clay holding up his hands, fingers positioned to look like the Roman numeral three, the sign for the Black Disciples, Richardson explained.
Charles Edward Smith Jr., a 17-year-old killed by a North Little Rock officer in a January traffic stop, was also featured in the music video.
Dominique King, Clay's Little Rock-based defense attorney, said the video, which had been posted on YouTube, was irrelevant, and he objected to it being considered as evidence. Plenty of rappers make music videos and aren't affiliated with gangs, she argued.
"It's just a music video," she said. "They're acting. ... You have no way of knowing if they're real guns."
King called Clay's mother, Georgena Clay, to the witness stand to talk about her son's addiction to prescription opioids. She said she hoped he'd undergo drug treatment.
Minutes after Georgena Clay's testimony, her son was escorted out of the courtroom. In the hallway, his month-old son rested in his mother's arms. The handcuffed teen kissed his baby's forehead before leaving.
Metro on 05/04/2018