Chapter 1 Corruption in White County

This is the story of the Corruption that exists in White County Arkansas, all of the names are real, all of the victims are real, and all of the corruption is documented as you will see over a period of time it takes for me to get all of this online.
This just the beginning!

On September 1, 2013, my son and grandson were dove hunting on family property on Quattlebaum Road in White County Arkansas, when a man approached us and pulled a gun on me.  My son, Adam, hit him with the butt of his shotgun to disarm him. He was successful in disarming him, but unfortunately the man wrestled his shotgun away from him in the ensuing struggle. As the man gained control of the shotgun, I rose from the chair I was sitting in and began to yell over and over for him to put the gun down. As I rose, a pistol that I had sitting in the chair beside me fell to the ground. Adam recovered it, and after many attempts to get this man to drop the shotgun, I decided that he was about to kill us. I was squeezing the trigger to end this man’s life. I knew he was going to kill one of us if I did not react. In defense of my life and my family’s life, I had made the hardest decision of my life. I was in the process of squeezing the trigger when Adam dropped him from my sights with a shot to his knee. This ended the confrontation. The man released the shotgun. The threat was gone, and I immediately went to the man’s aid to see how bad he was injured. I asked him where he was hit and he said his knee. I looked at his knee and there was a hole in the center of his knee cap. It appeared to me that it was a glancing shot and it was not bleeding. I told the man it looked like it was a nick and he stated, “No, it went in.”

 As a matter of fact, it had completely passed through his knee and had come out the back of his knee. He was wearing shorts and his knee was completely exposed, yet he was not bleeding. I have been certified in first aid and CPR. If it was necessary I would have taken action to make sure he was taken care of, but he was not bleeding, and I didn’t know the bullet had actually exited. The man didn’t know this either at the time until much later when his brother told him. The entire time we were in his presence he was not bleeding.

I told my son in law, who had just arrived a few minutes earlier, to take my grandson to the truck and to call 911.

During the course of the trial, the state entered into evidence five 911 calls. The prosecutor asked the detective if these were all of the 911 calls that existed and he assured her they were. They then played the 911 tapes in open court as I sat in the witness room, unable to hear what was being said. Immediately after the 911 tapes were played I was called to the witness stand. I testified about what had transpired as well as the conversation I had with the 911 operator. At this point the prosecutor stood up and said that wasn’t on any of the 911 tapes.  I told him that’s what I said to the 911 operator and, he says no you did not.  At this point of the trial, I knew what I had said to the 911 operator, and I was confused, because he was saying I didn’t say that on 911. I found out many months later that the 911 tape in question was withheld from evidence, making everything I had just said appear to be a lie. The judge had just listened to the 911 tapes, and I just got up there and said a lot of stuff that was not on any of the 911 tapes they played. His only logical reaction would be to believe I was lying and making up a story, which completely impugned any credibility as a witness I had.  Furthermore, as the father and father-in-law of the defense witness, he most likely believed that I had coached my son and son-in-law to all stick to the same story. Therefore any witness following me was without credibility. In the judge’s ruling he stated he just didn’t believe the witnesses for the defense.

I had told Paul Petty, our attorney, many times that I was pulling the trigger on this man’s head when Adam dropped him out my gun sights, thereby saving his life. He told me to not mention that in court because the court would think I was being the aggressor. I replied to Paul that I didn’t believe that would be the case, on the contrary, I believed that they would see that I was protecting my family and myself from imminent danger. When the judge ruled he stated if we were in that much danger, then why didn’t his father shoot? I can’t tell you how deeply that upset me, to know if I had just told the truth and not listened to Paul Petty it may have all been different.  I had given Paul pictures and Google maps that would have discredited everything the state presented from the number one witness, who was child molester and several times convicted felon. He had tried unsuccessfully to steal some property through the courts that was directly on front of his property. This was after he had agreed to buy it from us and he initiated the conversation that he wished to purchase the property. It has also been rumored he was a paid or unpaid informant for the White County Sheriff’s Office. This man would have had to run almost 300 yards in under 15 seconds to have been where he claimed to be when this shooting occurred. This can be proven by distances clearly marked on Google Earth maps. Also, the Yandells claimed our shotgun pellets were hitting their house that was over 800 feet from where we were. Ballistics clearly show that to be an impossibility. Paul Petty never entered any of this information into evidence, nor did he use any of it. All the police officers that were on scene that night told us we did the right thing and we did exactly as they would have done. All of them were called to witness and Paul let them all leave without any of their testimony being entered in our defense. At the end of the trial he failed to ask for a dismissal. Throughout the trial he was repeatedly asked by Adam to rebut the testimony that was being made against us, only to be told by Paul, “we don’t want to upset them or make them mad.” He sat there and did close to nothing to defend his client.

A few days after the shooting, detective Jeff Williams called my son-in-law, Jesse Wood, and asked him to come in to the office to talk. Jesse told him he had already given his statement and didn’t feel the need to add to what he had already said. At that point Jeff Williams threatened Jesse Wood, telling him that if he didn’t come in and say that Justin Yandell had laid his gun down before he got to us, he would “make sure he went back to prison.” After this threat was made, my wife and I immediately hired Bryce Brewer to deal with Mr. Williams on Jesse’s behalf.

Nineteen days after this shooting happened they had not arrested the man who attacked us and forced us to shoot him. I had made many phone calls to the detective they had given the case to, and he would not return my phone calls, nor would he return the phone calls of Bryce Brewer,  Jesse’s attorney.  On the 19^th of September, 2013, my wife and I decided to go talk to the White County sheriff and find out what was happening and why he had not been arrested. We were met by detective Jeff Williams who was handling the case. We went into his office and I asked him why he would not return my phone calls or the phone calls of our lawyer Bryce Brewer. He did not reply. I then asked him why he had not arrested the man who attacked us, his reply was, “Well,  I can’t get him for trespassing because he wasn’t on your property.” I said I was on my families property, but I didn’t really care if he was arrested for trespassing, I wanted him arrested for attacking us. Mr. Williams replied, “Well, he didn’t have a gun when he came down there, he laid it on the ground before he got there.” At this point, I became very upset, and told Mr. Williams that he not only had one gun, he had two, his own pistol and then he had my sons shotgun, which he was about to use on us when he was shot. At this point Mr. Williams jumped out of his chair, slamming it back against the wall and knocking things off his wall, and stated very loudly, “I don’t have to listen to this! Get out of my office!” At which point I told him, “No, you do have to listen, because you are a public servant.” Another officer came in and they both escorted us out. I told him, “You are treating us like we are the criminals here.” I made him mad, and what he did after this is why we are all here. Two to three hours after our meeting on the initial report, we were the victims of the crime. That day he changed it to the man being the victim and us being the criminals, and from that day forward he did everything within his power to prove that we perpetrated this whole deal, including withholding a key 911 call that would have made all the difference in this case. His key witness, Berry Reynolds, who purported to have seen the whole thing happen, made a statement and they used this to file charges against Adam. This same guy had stated to my daughter and wife how bad these Yandell people were and that the other brother had been in a shootout with his nephew a couple weeks prior to this incident. He stated he hated those people. Then, all of a sudden, he took their side, and gave a complete and detailed statement to Jeff Williams. For him to have been where he claimed he was when this all happened, he would have been right there with us and everyone would have seen him. He claimed that he could see where we were from his front porch, and that is physically impossible. He then claimed he was down the road about 100 yards from his house with his binoculars. Then he claimed he ran across a field in plain view of my son –in-law and got to where he stated he was when this all happened. From the time Justin Yandell stepped between the trees when we could first see him, until the time he was shot and on the ground, was less than fifteen seconds. That means that when Berry Reynolds saw Justin come through the trees he had to run over 200 yards to get where he could see what happened. The fastest man on earth could not have done what he claimed he did. He never showed up to court when the trial happened, but it was told in court that he witnessed the crime and corroborated the state’s case. Also, Jeff Williams did not run Berry Reynolds rap sheet until the day of or day after he got mad at me and threw me out of his office. Questionable, if you ask me. I feel our attorney should not have allowed any of this into the court record before the judge, but he just sat there and said nothing.




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