Parole for a Mountain Home woman sentenced to 17 years in prison for the late 2010 killing of her live-in boyfriend has been approved.
Forty-eight-year-old Rhonda Jean Clark was found guilty of second-degree murder by a Baxter County Circuit Court jury on December 21, 2012.
The state had originally charged her with the more serious crime of first-degree murder, but the jury exercised its option to select the lesser-included offense.
Clark was accused of shooting and killing then 43-year-old Antonio Sanchez, III on Thanksgiving eve in the home the couple shared on Old Tracy Ferry Road.
An autopsy was preformed on Sanchez’s body. He was found to have been shot twice, including a head wound determined to be the most serious.
What was first believed to be a bullet wound in Sanchez’s back proved to be a “stab-type” puncture wound to a depth of almost six inches. The State Medical Examiner’s Office reported an instrument other than a knife likely inflicted the wound.
According to testimony during trial, Clark had gone to a restaurant on Highway 62/412 East on Thanksgiving Day and told a co-worker Sanchez had committed suicide.
During the trial, an investigator who worked the case dismissed the suicide story when he testified, “you don’t shoot yourself twice in the back with a rifle and then stab yourself.”
The defense painted Sanchez as being abusive to Clark to the point law enforcement had to be involved.
Clark was interviewed by a Baxter County Deputy Sheriff a few months before the shooting. She maintained Sanchez had assaulted her and that she suffered a number of injuries to her chest and back. She said she had also been choked.
On the day of the shooting, Clark alleged that Sanchez had grown angry with her because she had refused to go with him to his father’s house in Mountain Home to help prepare the family’s Thanksgiving dinner.
She said a verbal and physical altercation ensued.
Clark had told investigators a number of stories about how her boyfriend had been killed. She said at one point that if she did shoot Sanchez it would have been an accident.
Shortly after her trial, Clark’s attorney filed a notice of appeal in the case, but the appeal was dropped.
Clark has been up for parole several times. The last decision from the state Parole Board came in early September last year when her case was deferred.
She is currently an inmate at the McPherson Unit of the state prison system. It generally takes up to two months for an inmate to be released after parole is approved.
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