A Flippin man who has picked up a number of criminal charges since 2013 appeared in Baxter County Circuit Court Monday.
During the last 10 years, 30-year-old Leigh Blackmon has faced charges including theft of property, criminal trespass, breaking or entering, commercial burglary, possession of drug paraphernalia, 2nd degree battery and tampering with evidence.
He has been accused of breaking into houses, stealing vehicles and having drug paraphernalia in his possession.
Blackmon appeared in Baxter County Circuit Court Monday to face charges in a revocation petition that was filed in a 2019 Baxter County case in which he was charged with residential burglary, criminal trespass and tampering with evidence.
According to the petition, the revocation of Blackmon’s 10-year probation sentence in the Baxter County case is based on new charges filed in Marion County in late April last year.
The revocation against Blackmon was reduced to contempt of court and he was sentenced to 89 days in jail that he has already served.
NEW MARION COUNTY CHARGES
In the new Marion County case that prompted the revocation petition in the Baxter County case, Blackmon is charged with hitting his cousin with a shovel and 2X4 plank of wood after the relative requested the return of two tool bags he said belonged to him and had been stolen.
The victim told investigators that on March 5, last year he had gone to Blackmon’s residence and while there had seen the tool bags under the deck of the house.
He said he wanted to reclaim them. The next day, the victim said he tried unsuccessfully to reach his cousin by telephone.
The victim said when he got to Blackmon’s home located along Marion County Road 7032, he first met his cousin’s father who told the victim not to take the tool bags because “that would be stealing.”
The victim asked the father to contact Blackmon and have him come to the house so they could discuss the situation.
He said when Blackmon arrived, he became physical immediately. The victim said Blackmon, “jumped out of his pickup truck yelling, grabbed a shovel” and swung it at the victim five-or-six times, hitting his left arm.
When the shovel slipped out of Blackmon’s hands, he replaced it with a board and hit the victim in the right arm.
The victim was taken to Baxter Health by ambulance where he was treated for a broken arm.
BURGLARY AT BAXTER COUNTY RESIDENCE
In the 2019 Baxter County case, Blackmon pled guilty to residential burglary, tampering with evidence and theft of property stemming from a break-in at a residence in Clarkridge in late June 2019.
The victims told investigators they had been in Destin, Florida on vacation when the break-in occurred.
Blackmon, who worked for the victims at the time, called them in Florida and told them the back door to their residence was open.
After one of the owners accessed surveillance cameras in the residence, she saw Blackmon entering the home on the same day he had called the vacationing couple to report the open door.
The female victim said she watched Blackmon go through a kitchen cabinet where she kept medications.
When the couple returned home, they found pain medications prescribed after the female resident had undergone surgery missing.
At one point, while in the home, Blackmon is reported to have noticed the surveillance cameras and disabled them by disconnecting the Wi-Fi system in the residence.
The surveillance system automatically downloads to the female victims cell phone and she sent the video clip showing Blackmon in the house to a Baxter County Sheriff’s investigator by e-mail.
He was on probation in the Baxter County case when he was arrested on charges stemming from the attack on his cousin.
The home that had been broken into located along County Road 479, burned two days after investigators had been at the residence to look into the burglary.
The residents awoke to find the back deck in flames. Everyone escaped. The cedar-sided house was declared a total loss.
A cause of the fire was never publically disclosed and no charges were apparently ever filed.
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