Gurdon victim of random shooting has no ill will for gunman

By JOEL PHELPS | arkadelphian.com

Yolanda Holman eased her car along a brief stretch of 6th Street and slowed to a brief pause at its junction with Crayton Street. There was no traffic — it was four minutes past midnight in the rural town of Gurdon, Arkansas. Home waited just 200 feet away at the crest of a gentle slope of asphalt lit by a full March moon. As she made the turn, so too would her destiny.

That’s when she heard a quick succession of popping noises, like someone tossed lit firecrackers onto the trunk of her car.

Shit, I’ve been shot.

This was Holman’s first thought as a sharp pinch stung her lower back. The throbbing burn prompted her to reach for the source of pain. Instinctively, she ducked her head. Another pop. She didn’t know it at the time, but the second pop was likely a bullet that penetrated her seat’s headrest and the windshield before her.

She steered the vehicle home and pulled into her driveway at 610 E. Crayton St.

Holman grabbed a rag and shoved it to the now-stinging pain, 3 inches to the right of her spine. She inspected the rag; while the darkness prevented her from seeing the dark maroon, she felt the wet cloth and knew right away that it was blood.

“I felt like I had just been sucker-punched really hard in the kidney,” recalls Holman.

Holman used her left hand to dial 911 from her cell phone. A former Benton County dispatcher herself, the 58-year-old kept calm as she relayed her situation.

Holman’s assailant, armed with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, stood in the street outside his home at 512 E. Crayton, one block from the curve in Gurdon’s main strip of state Highway 53.

The gunman called 911, also, but his message to a dispatcher was that he had just shot the person he thought was trying to break into his house.

Police and an ambulance arrived. The suspect, 36-year-old Kenneth Harper Jr., surrendered himself and the firearm to law enforcement.

Holman would spend the next five days in a Hot Springs hospital. She spent the first three of those days in the Intensive Care Unit.

Weeks after the shooting, Holman is sharing her story, and she’s not the least bit angry with the man who nearly killed her.

The bullet that did strike Holman penetrated a kidney and stopped in her liver, where it remains lodged. Doctors didn’t remove the bullet, she said, because they feared extracting it would cause more damage.

“I’m still in a lot of pain,” she said. It’s not a fear of being shot again, but rather the anxiety she now lives with that’s difficult. She’s easily jolted: just hearing a door slam next door interrupts her calm. She isn’t sure if she can continue living in the home she owns in this quiet South Arkansas logging town of 1,200 residents.

Holman is the widow of a Silver Star veteran and works as a medical claims specialist. She moved from Oregon back to Arkansas three years ago for the low cost of living. Since her time in Gurdon she’s become known as “Nana” to those who know her. It was a neighbor who phoned her in the hours before she was shot; he had asked “Nana” for advice on what he should do about his 5-year-old son who had been bitten by a feral cat. Holman insisted on driving the boy — now running fever from infection — to the emergency room at Baptist Health Medical Center in Arkadelphia. Afterward, they stopped at a gas station for ice cream, then she returned him home in Gurdon.

Holman’s eyes fill with tears when she thinks of what might have happened had the little boy been in the car with her when Harper allegedly sprayed bullets toward Holman’s vehicle as she drove away from him. Four bullets hit the vehicle.

Holman now faces a mountain of medical bills in addition to the wages lost from her hospitalization and subsequent treatments. “Nanas aren’t supposed to get shot,” Holman said. “Nanas are supposed to give hugs.”

An unemployed father of 6, Harper faces felony charges of first-degree battery and aggravated assault. An original indictment by the Clark County Sheriff’s Office charged him with four counts of the latter. He remains incarcerated at the Clark County Detention Center. Bond for his release has been set at $100,000. He is expected to enter a plea at a May 7 arraignment in Clark County Circuit Court.

Holman is convinced, however, that Harper doesn’t belong in a jail cell.

“The man was trying to kill me, and he didn’t even know me,” Holman said. The first time Holman saw her assailant’s likeness was when she read news of the incident at arkadelphian.com and saw Harper’s mugshot. Holman believes that Harper’s mental health may not have been given serious consideration.

Harper had made 911 calls prior to the shooting, telling dispatchers he was convinced someone was under his house and trying to break in. Thomas Free, an officer with the Gurdon Marshal’s Office, had just begun a night shift when he was summoned to check out Harper’s situation. He searched for the phantom burglar but found no evidence of anyone at or near the home.

It would be Free who arrived first to the scene of the shooting. He stayed at Holman’s side until she was loaded into an ambulance.

It’s noted in court documents that, prior to the shooting, the marshal’s office had been summoned to Harper’s residence for calls of the “same nature” but police were “unsuccessful in locating anyone or anything.”

Harper “had been crying for help all day long,” Holman said. “I hope he gets help.”

While a no-contact order would prohibit Harper from making contact with Holman, she said her message to him would be that “It’s OK. I don’t hold anything against him. I’m not mad at him. Just get some help and get rid of the gun.”