Dusty Rhoades (Photo courtesy of Baxter County Sheriff’s Office)
In the span of about 10 days in March, Dusty Allan Rhoades was arrested and charged with a series of interconnected crimes in Baxter, Marion and Stone counties.
Rhoades also picked up a new charge after being jailed in which he is accused of assaulting an inmate in the Baxter County Detention Center on Aug. 6.
Rhoades appeared in Baxter County Circuit Court Monday, and it was announced motions may be filed requesting that he undergo a psychological evaluation.
JAIL CHARGES
According to jail staff, Rhoades approached the victim, who was on his bunk and apparently sleeping, and hit him in the face. The victim was taken to Baxter Health and was reported to have had his jaw broken, lacerations to his head and teeth knocked out.
When the victim went to a restroom, Rhoades followed and attacked the man again.
THREE OLDER CASES
Rhoades, who lists an address in Harriet, has faced charges in several counties. The charges include breaking or entering, residential burglary, theft of property, leaving the scene of an accident, two counts of second-degree battery, false imprisonment, impairing the operations of a vital public facility, theft by receiving, fleeing, being a felon in possession of a firearm and being a habitual offender.
In mid-March, Rhoades was accused of being involved in what originally appeared to be the act of a good Samaritan but ended up with him arrested for stealing a truck from an 84-year-old-woman.
On March 17, the victim reported that her 2003 GMC truck had been taken from her residence.
She told investigators she had driven the truck to Walker Cemetery located along County Road 25 and had gotten stuck.
Rhoades and an unidentified man were reported to have stopped and offered to help the woman get her truck out of the ditch.
One of the men then offered to drive the truck to the woman’s residence. He was reported to have returned the key ring after the trip, but it was discovered after the theft that the key to the truck’s ignition had been removed.
The victim said a short time later, the men returned to her house, and the man who had driven her there got into the truck and left.
On March 25, Rhoades was reported to have been seen on security cameras in possession of the stolen truck while at a convenience store along Buzzard Roost Road.
Rhoades was seen inside the store and then driving off in the truck.
The next day, the truck was found abandoned in rural Stone County.
While Stone County sheriff’s deputies were investigating the truck stolen from the elderly woman in Baxter County and abandoned in Stone County, a man approached them and reported he lived nearby and had discovered that his shop and residence had been entered.
He told deputies that a 2002 white Dodge pickup had been taken from his property.
Investigators said a door in the residence had been pried open in an area near where the residents slept.
Investigators reported Rhoades apparently abandoned one stolen truck and took another to take its place.
Charges have also been filed against Rhoades in Marion County. Rhoades was alleged to have been in the Dodge truck stolen in Stone County when spotted by an Arkansas State Police trooper in the parking lot of a business in Pyatt.
When Rhoades came out of the store, he was ordered to get on the ground but ran off instead. A gun was found just north of the business, and Rhoades was reported to have admitted he had dropped the gun.
After an extensive search, Rhoades was eventually tracked by an Arkansas Department of Corrections K-9 team and apprehended.
The ignition key to the GMC pickup stolen from the elderly woman was found in the second stolen truck as well as items taken from the residence and shop that had been broken into in Stone County.
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