A woman originally charged with second-degree murder entered a no contest plea to a reduced charge of manslaughter in Baxter County Circuit Court Monday.
Twenty-one-year-old Savannah Nicole Wren was sentenced to 10 years in prison. She was set for a jury trial, but entered the plea instead.
She was first arrested in late November 2020 on charges of criminal attempt to commit murder in the second degree.
The charge was upgraded in early December 2020 to 2nd degree murder when the victim – then 19-year-old Chaseton Lewter – died.
The bond for Wren was increased from $150,000 to $500,000 based on the upgraded charge and then lowered to $200,000 by a court order issued April 19 last year.
The incident leading to Wren’s charges began when Mountain Home police were called to an address along Cooper Estates Drive just before 3 a.m. Nov. 24, 2020 in response to a report of a male being shot.
Lewter was found in a back bedroom with an apparent gunshot wound to his forehead. He was first taken to Baxter Regional Medical Center for treatment and later flown to Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock where he died.
Wren, who was reported to be the resident at the Cooper Estates Drive address, fled on foot before police arrived.
She was eventually tracked to Marion County and arrested a few hours after the shooting.
Investigators say they were told by two people who had been at Wren’s residence when the incident took place that Wren shot Lewter.
Deputy Prosecutor John Russo told the court Monday investigators had determined that four people had been at Wren’s apartment drinking when Lewter is alleged to have pulled out a firearm. He was said to have put the weapon to his forehead and dared Wren to pull the trigger. She was also reported to have been told the safety on the weapon was activated.
After the plea had been taken and sentence passed by retired Circuit Judge Gordon Webb, Wren’s attorney, Paul Bayless, asked the judge to allow his client to remain free on bond until transported to the state prison system.
The victim’s father made an emotional statement to the court opposing any such arrangement that would allow Wren to stay out of jail.
When he was invited to sit while making his statement, the father said he wanted to stand. He said he wanted Wren “to have to look at me while I say what I’ve got to say.”
Fighting to keep his emotions in check, the father said, “People can just call this a bunch of people playing around, partying all they want to, but it ended up with my son being killed.”
The father faced Wren, telling her, “You are the one who pulled the trigger. You took my baby and screwed up my family. I wanted to hate you so bad, but now you just look like a scared little girl.”
The distraught father said his son was 19 at the time he was killed, “but he was still my baby.”
Lewter’s father said his other children were having a difficult time dealing with the death of their older brother.
He said Wren, “will get to see her children again, but I can’t see my son.”
The father told Judge Webb that Wren had been free for several years since his son’s death.
“It’s time for her to own up and start doing her time…no more free time for her, she needs to be in jail,” the father told the court.
After the father’s statement, Judge Webb denied allowing Wren to remain free on bond, and ordered her into the custody of the Baxter County Sheriff’s Office to await transportation to the state prison system.
SEX WITH A MINOR CHARGES IN MARION COUNTY
Wren also faces charges in Marion County of having sex with a then 15-year-old male student at Flippin High School.
Wren will appear in Marion County Circuit Court shortly and will take a plea in that case, in which she is charged with sexual assault.
She is to receive 10 years probation to be served after she is released from prison on the manslaughter conviction.
She was arrested in April 2021. It is alleged Wren had sex with the teen during a period when she was a substitute teacher in at least two of his classes at the high school.
The student reportedly told investigators that around the time of the school’s 2019 spring break, he smoked marijuana with Wren and had sexual intercourse with her on three separate occasions at her residence.
According to the probable cause affidavit, Senior Special Agent Becky Vacco of the Crimes Against Children Division of the Arkansas State Police interviewed Wren in late November 2020.
Wren was alleged to have admitted she had served as a substitute teacher for schools in Baxter and Marion Counties.
She reported the male juvenile was a neighbor of hers when she lived in Flippin, but claimed she did not know whether she had been a substitute teacher in any of his classes.
When the interview turned to whether she had been substituting during the period when she and the juvenile victim allegedly had sex, Wren broke off the interview by invoking her right to having an attorney present during questioning.
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