Clarksville killer gets 30 years

A Clarksville man was sentenced to 30 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder last month.

Johnny Wayne Harderson, 45, told police a jacked-up car fell on his girlfriend, Chasity Bond, 37, of Newton County on Dec. 4.

But an autopsy by the Arkansas medical examiner’s office determined it was a homicide involving strangulation and blunt-force trauma.

Circuit Judge John Putman accepted Harderson’s guilty plea, according to a sentencing order filed Aug. 28 in Newton County Circuit Court.

According to an affidavit filed in the same court, Harderson told police that the couple were driving through Newton County when they decided to stop at the home of his sister, Sonya Rigsby.

Although nobody was home, Harderson decided to change the brakes on a green Chevrolet Cavalier in the dirt driveway in front of his sister’s home, according to the affidavit from David Small, a special agent with the Arkansas State Police.

“According to Harderson, it was dark, he was using a flashlight, and he jacked up the vehicle, removed the right (passenger side) front tire and went inside the residence,” the affidavit said. “Harderson said when he returned, Bond was under the right front of the vehicle, face down, and the vehicle had fallen off the jack and was lying on her head.”

Harderson told police he removed the vehicle, replaced the wheel and drove Bond in the Cavalier to the nearby home of another one of his sisters, Dicie Arvell Becker, who lives near the Edwards Junction community, according to the affidavit.

Becker called 911 at 10:07 p.m. Dec. 4. She and Harderson drove Bond to Johnson Regional Medical Center in Clarksville, where a doctor pronounced her dead at 11:07 p.m., according to the affidavit.

On Dec. 7, Dr. Stephen Erickson, a medical examiner with the state Crime Laboratory in Little Rock, ruled the death a homicide.