After deliberating for six hours Wednesday, members of a Baxter County Circuit Court jury were unable to reach a unanimous verdict on some charges filed against 61-year-old Robert Dean Penny, including first-degree murder. The panel did find Penny guilty of aggravated assault and criminal mischief charges, all stemming from the late 2017 shooting death of his landlord, 71-year-old Chester Hornowski.
Penny was charged with shooting Hornowski 22 times. He was first alleged to have initially shot the landlord 18 times, reloaded and shot four more bullets into the man’s body.
The jury did find Penny guilty of one count of aggravated assault and criminal mischief and recommended he be sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined $20,000. Judge Gordon Webb accepted the recommendation and pronounced sentence on Penny.
Before sentence was pronounced, Judge Webb asked Penny if he had anything to say and, in a quiet, emotionless voice, the defendant replied in the negative. Penny showed very little emotion during the trial, even as he looked at autopsy photos of the victim.
The jury panel came into the courtroom at one point Wednesday and told Judge Webb they were very near an impasse in their deliberations. They returned to the jury room, but came back again and said on the first-degree murder charge they were hopelessly deadlocked. Judge Webb declared a mistrial on that charge. It will be retried at some point in the future, according to Prosecutor David Ethredge.
Ethredge told the jury on Monday the case they were about to hear was one about choices, including Penny’s choice to shoot Hornowski multiple times.
In his closing statement Wednesday, Ethredge pointed out to the jury Penny said he was mad at Hornowski at the time of the shooting. Ethredge asked the jurors “how mad would you have to be to pull the trigger 18 times, then reload and shoot the victim’s dying or dead body four more times?”
Defense attorney Sam Pasthing said in his closing his client was attacked by Hornowski and Penny feared the attack would continue and shot his landlord in self defense.
The shooting was reported to have been sparked by an alleged eviction threat apparently based on Penny’s refusal to participate in work details with other tenants.
The site of the murder, 5097 Old Military Road, was owned by Hornowski. The complex was home to a number of people in what was described as a boarding house-type arrangement.
According to testimony from former residents, it was not unusual for tenants to “pay down” their rent by working around the property. One former tenant told the jury on the first day of the trial, the chores included mowing, cutting wood, doing small construction projects and raking leaves.
The rent tenants paid gave them a bedroom and access to a central kitchen.
Friends say Hornowski, a 34-year-veteran of the Chicago Police Department, had run a similar multi-resident operation in the Illinois city prior to retiring to the Twin Lakes Area to be near family.
Hornowski met with Penny about not being willing to work and the possibility of him being asked to move, and Hornowski called the other residents to come to the area where the two men were. Before they could all gather, gunshots rang out.
In his testimony, a former resident said Penny told Hornowski he was retired with a number of health problems, leaving him unable to work. The former tenant testified that situation led Hornowski to decide to ask Penny to move.
Penny is alleged to have said he fired the last four rounds into the landlord’s body as it lay on the floor because being asked to leave the property would “ruin my life.”
Penny was said to have confronted some of the other tenants after the gunfire ended. He told them Hornowski was dead and taunted, “You want some of this, too?” in reference to the 9mm handgun he had used to kill Hornowski. Penny said he had made the statement because he was unsure who “would be attacking me next.”
Even though he did not testify during the trial, prosecutors played a videotape of an interview investigators conducted with Penny on the day of the murder. He said he had shot Hornowski because the man had come at him “in a rage,” threatening to throw him out of the residence. He alleged Hornowski had punched him in the chest. Officers said they found no visible marks on Penny’s body to bolster his allegations of being struck.
Penny told his interrogators, Hornowski was yelling and screaming, with his face, “all bloated and red.” Penny said he warned Hornowski to leave him alone, but the landlord “came at me with those big, fat fists all balled up.” It was at that point, Penny said, he fired the first 18 shots and Hornowski went down.
The shooter said Hornowski was “an abuser of senior citizens” requiring his tenants to do work for him. Penny told the investigators even though Hornowski knew he was not in good health, “he was always coming up with something he wanted you to do.”
Following the shooting, Penny is reported to have bolted from the building, gotten into his 2004 dark blue pickup truck and made a wild dash to get away from the scene. Officers were already on the scene with more arriving when Penny tried to get away. The initial calls to 911 dispatchers came in just before 8:30 a.m. on Dec. 5, 2017, and since it concerned an active shooter being at the Old Military Road address, it required an all-hands-on-deck response.
During his attempt to flee the scene, Penny came close to running down a Baxter County deputy sheriff. The deputy testified he could hear the engine of Penny’s truck accelerating and testified it was headed straight toward him. Officers fired at the truck in an attempt to disable the vehicle or the driver to protect their fellow officers and to prevent what could have been a very dangerous pursuit, if Penny had been able to drive away. An aggravated assault charge was filed against Penny stemming from the near miss.
Penny’s vehicle hit a ditch on the northeast corner of the property, becoming airborne before smashing into an unoccupied 2017 SUV assigned to Baxter County Sheriff John Montgomery. The SUV sustained almost $19,000 in damages. The criminal mischief charge resulted from the damages to the vehicle.
In his taped interview with investigators, Penny said his decision to leave the property to go to a friend’s residence in Midway “was just stupid.” Penny said he had tried to call the friend on the phone to tell him what had happened, but was unable to contact him, so opted to drive.
Penny denied seeing the deputy he is accused of almost running down. He said he would certainly not have hit the deputy on purpose since he “had already screwed up enough” for one day.
Approximately 17 officers and investigators from the Baxter County Sheriff’s Office, Arkansas State Police, the Mountain Home Police Department and the Baxter County Coroner’s Office worked to process the murder scene.
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