La Quinta shooter gets life for capital murder
Posted on Thursday, July 10, 2008
A Fayetteville man avoided a possible death sentence by pleading guilty to murdering his girlfriend and shooting her co-worker in January at the La Quinta Inn & Suites in Springdale.
Jonathan Lawrence Dean Lee, 22, was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison without parole on a capital murder charge by 4 th Judicial Circuit Judge William Storey. He also pleaded guilty to attempted capital murder and theft of property. He was sentenced to life for attempted capital murder and 10 years for the theft. The sentences run consecutively.
Lee fatally shot Kathryn “ Katie ” Arnold, 19, of Springdale, on the night of Jan. 15 while she was working at the front desk at La Quinta.
He also shot Edward Niccum, 59, of Huntsville, who was a trainee working with Arnold that night. Niccum is paralyzed from the waist down and in rehabilitation because Lee shot him in the spinal cord, said John Threet, 4 th Judicial District prosecutor.
Lee was angry because Arnold had broken up with him the day before, and Niccum was an innocent bystander, according to police.
Lee shot Arnold three times and Niccum twice using a revolver he had stolen on the day of the shooting, according to police.
Following the shooting, Lee was arrested on the morning of Jan. 16 at a friend’s house in Tontitown.
The state agreed to the negotiated plea and sentence at the request of Arnold’s family, which did not want to go through the agony of a trial, Threet said.
“ I was intending to seek the death penalty, ” he said.
In April, Threet convinced a Washington County jury to recommend the death penalty — the first time in more than 26 years — after convicting Gregory Decay on two counts of capital murder for the shooting deaths of a Fayetteville couple.
He recently filed notice of intent to seek the death penalty against Zachariah Marcyniuk of Fayetteville for the stabbing death of his 24-year-old ex-girlfriend.
Marcyniuk, 28, of Fayetteville, is accused of stabbing Katharine “ Katie” Wood to death on March 9. Wood, of Greenbrier, was a senior English major at the University of Arkansas.
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