Ashdown man charged with aggravated assault after police review his own video of neighbor confrontation

ASHDOWN, Ark. — An Ashdown man who handed police his own video of a September confrontation with a neighbor has been charged with aggravated assault after an investigator reviewed the footage and concluded he was the aggressor, court records show.

Billy Pat Gill Jr., 65, pleaded not guilty Tuesday in Little River County Circuit Court to one count of aggravated assault, a Class D felony punishable by up to six years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000, court records show. A court-appointed attorney represents him. A pretrial hearing is set for Jan. 12, and a jury trial is set for the week of Jan. 25.

Gill was first arrested on a warrant that accused him of first-degree stalking while armed with a deadly weapon, a Class B felony, along with disorderly conduct and obstructing governmental operations. At his first appearance Oct. 6, a judge set his bond at $15,000 and ordered him to have no contact with the alleged victim. He posted bond through a bonding company the same day, records show.

The criminal information filed Monday by Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Erin Hunter charges Gill only with aggravated assault, accusing him of displaying a firearm or otherwise creating a substantial danger of death or serious physical injury to another person on Sept. 13.

That day, Gill reported a disturbance to Ashdown Police Officer Kaleb Kegley at his home, saying a neighbor had started talking to him while he was out walking and the two had argued, according to an affidavit by Ashdown Police CID Sgt. Jarrod Simmons. Gill gave Kegley a video he had recorded of the encounter.

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Simmons wrote that he reviewed the video, which Gill had posted on his YouTube page, and determined that Gill was the aggressor. The video showed Gill walk past the neighbor’s home, turn around and walk back toward the man, who was working on a vehicle in his yard, then make an obscene gesture at him, the affidavit says.

When the two met near the front of the house, Gill could be heard telling the neighbor he was “not going to do a f—— thing” and to “shut the f— up,” according to the affidavit. The neighbor responded, “I don’t give a f— if you have a gun” and “I will make you use that m—–f—–,” to which Gill replied, “I will.” The argument did not go beyond words, the affidavit says.

Officers were not able to reach the neighbor until Oct. 1, when he told Lt. Lynn Baucum that Gill had continually harassed him, regularly passing his home, recording him and making threatening comments, according to the affidavit. He said that during the Sept. 13 encounter, Gill pulled a pistol from his pocket.

That morning, the neighbor said, Gill had come by the house where he was working, recorded him and used profane language. While Baucum was there taking his statement, Gill drove by, turned around and came back, then walked across the road into the path of oncoming traffic while recording on his cellphone, the affidavit says. Gill yelled at Baucum to “do my job” and cursed at him, and kept up his confrontational behavior after the lieutenant told him to stop interfering, according to the affidavit.

Simmons also reviewed several videos on Gill’s Facebook page, “Ashdown Swamp Donkey,” that showed multiple encounters in which Gill walked past the neighbor’s home and engaged him, directing profanities at him, questioning whether he used illegal drugs and otherwise antagonizing him, the affidavit says.

Gill went to court himself this summer. On July 1, he petitioned for orders of protection against two Ashdown women, Little River County court records show. In handwritten petitions, he wrote that one woman had shouted that she would kill him as he walked his dog and had posted on Facebook threatening to shoot him and poison the dog, and that the other had threatened him and his dog as they walked past her home. No emergency orders were issued. Both cases were dismissed without prejudice at the request of Gill’s attorney at a Sept. 15 hearing, after the court found Gill was not related to or living with either woman, according to the dismissal orders.