A man with criminal cases in two counties entered a guilty plea to his Baxter County charges during a session of circuit court Thursday and was sentence to five years in prison.
Thirty-two-year-old Corey Thomas Ensign, who has listed addresses in Mountain Home and a town in Kentucky, faced drug-related, domestic battery and endangering the welfare of a minor charges in Baxter County.
He was arrested May 20 last year when Mountain Home Police responded to a report of an ongoing violent domestic altercation at a local apartment complex. Witnesses said Ensign was involved in the fracas and had tried to punch a female victim in the face while she was holding a baby.
Ensign was found hiding in a bathroom of the apartment. He admitted to police he had a smoking pipe used to ingest drugs and a small black bag containing two cut straws and another containing a white crystalline substance field testing positive for methamphetamine.
The state dismissed another drug-related charge against Ensign filed in Baxter County.
In Stone County, Ensign faced drug-related charges stemming from a traffic stop by an Arkansas State Police trooper in mid January last year. The trooper found Ensign and a female companion had 40 grams of methamphetamine, Xanax pills, marijuana and a 9-millimeter pistol in their vehicle.
Having both guns and drug in a person’s possession at the same time is a Class Y felony, the highest classification of crime in Arkansas. A person convicted of a Class Y felony could face a prison sentence from 10-to-40-years or life without the possibility of parole and up to a $25,000 fine. Stone County prosecutors dismissed the charge.
Ensign and his companion told the trooper they had purchased the drugs in Little Rock and were on their way to Mountain Home to sell them. The female with Ensign, 22-year-old Nicole Michelle Jenner, who also listed a Mountain Home address, picked up felony drug charges stemming from the traffic stop. She was sentenced to five years probation in Stone County May 24 of last year.
When Ensign failed to show up for court appearances in both Baxter and Stone counties, failure to appear warrants were issued. The warrant in Stone County was apparently issued in January last year and in October on the Baxter County charges. Ensign was picked up and booked into the Stone County jail on January 17. He had apparently been living in Kentucky.
The Baxter County sentence handed down Thursday will run concurrent with the one given Ensign in Stone County.
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