A Norfork man entered a guilty plea to certain charges against him and no contest to others during a session of Baxter County Circuit Court last Thursday.
Forty-year-old Nathaniel John Campbell, who is a parolee and has a fairly extensive criminal record, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and ordered to pay almost $1,600 in victim restitution.
Campbell faced drug-related charges, along with breaking or entering, theft of property and being a felon in possession of a firearm. He entered a no contest plea in a case involving the alleged theft of property from a mobile home and shed in December 2017. A number of items were reported taken, including tools and a camouflaged hunting blind.
After making the initial report, the victim called sheriff’s investigators back about two hours later to say he had seen the hunting blind in the backyard of a residence across the street where Campbell was said to live.
A no contest plea means the defendant in a case does not admit to the crimes, but concedes the state could prove the allegations at a trial.
Campbell’s arrest came about two weeks after a fugitive task force from Arkansas Community Corrections went to an address along Rodney Cutoff Road seeking him in mid-July. Campbell was a parole absconder at the time.
While members of the task force were unable to arrest Campbell at that time, they did catch sight of him as he fled into the woods behind the residence, which he shared with his live-in girlfriend, Casey Merriman, and a probationer, Jamie Southard.
Campbell was eventually arrested and booked into the Baxter County jail July 30.
WebReadyTM Powered by WireReady® NSI