The Gravette man who led police on a false manhunt while pretending to be the victim of a shooting pleaded guilty this week to several felony charges and was sentenced to almost 20 years in prison.
Anthony Jacob Oliver, 25, pleaded guilty in Benton County Circuit Judge Brad Karren’s courtroom to felony charges of residential burglary, theft of property and filing a false police report. He also pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of communicating a false alarm, said A.J. Anglin, deputy prosecuting attorney for the Benton County Prosecutor’s Office.
Anglin said Oliver was sentenced to 19 years and one month in the Arkansas Department of Correction prison system, with nine years of that sentence suspended.
Oliver pleaded not guilty in June to the charges after being arrested in May on suspicion of leading police on a false manhunt that shut down much of Gravette traffic and caused a schools in the area to lock down.
Oliver was accused of stealing several firearms from a neighbor. While trying to hide the guns at his home on Dallas Street, he accidentally shot himself in the leg in early May, said Deputy Keshia Guyll with the Benton County Sheriff’s Office. She said Oliver then made up a story about a burglar shooting him to cover up the theft of the guns.
The suspect was on probation at the time, after pleading guilty to felony theft of property last year in Washington County. He was arrested in 2011 and later sentenced to five years probation and four months in county jail.
The arrest came after Benton County deputies, Gravette police and state police spent several hours searching for a suspect who authorities now say never existed. The accidental shooting happened a few blocks from Gravette Middle School. All Gravette schools were subsequently placed on lockdown by administrators.
Armed deputies with helmets escorted students home from school, as hundreds of parents lined up to pick up their children.
Investigators confiscated at least four long guns from the home on Dallas Street in Gravette.
