Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios
Northwest Arkansas’ “energy gamers” are influential individuals who’ve made a distinction in our neighborhood in 2022, those that made head-turning strikes.
Why it issues: These influential people are serving to form Northwest Arkansas as we speak and for generations to come back.
The way it works: The 5 folks and teams we spotlight are elected officers, neighborhood activists and key members of the enterprise neighborhood.
Of word: We acknowledge that numerous folks advance the economic system, tradition and livability right here, each within the highlight and behind the scenes.
4 Arkansas transgender youths, their households and two medical doctors mixed efforts with the American Civil Liberties Union in a grievance in opposition to the state’s legal professional basic in 2021.
Largest transfer of 2022: After dealing with authorized arguments from the state to implement the ban, the households and the ACLU efficiently stored the regulation from taking impact this 12 months, till a federal bench trial started in October.
What we’re watching: The watershed trial concluded Dec. 1, however U.S. District Choose James M. Moody Jr. hasn’t supplied a timeline for his determination.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders served as White Home press secretary for 2 years throughout former President Trump’s administration, was a senior adviser to Sen. Tom Cotton in 2014 and marketing campaign supervisor for Sen. John Boozman in 2010. She additionally served as nationwide political director on former Gov. Mike Huckabee’s 2008 presidential bid. Huckabee is her father.
Largest transfer of 2022: Sanders gained the gubernatorial election with almost 63% of the votes solid, making her the primary lady to steer the Pure State.
What we’re watching: The whole lot. Sanders supplied few particulars about how she intends to manipulate throughout her marketing campaign.
Rafael Rios co-founded a meals truck in 2012, and he is since added one other truck, a restaurant in Bentonville and a downtown Rogers eatery. Many substances featured on the menu are from the household farm in Little Flock.
Largest transfer of 2022: Being named a James Beard Award semifinalist as among the finest cooks within the South.
What we’re watching: Extra nationwide consideration to the NWA culinary scene because of Yeyo’s scrumptious dishes.
Charles Robinson served as interim chancellor since August 2021 and was lately named to the function completely. He is worn many hats in his 23 years on the college, beginning as a professor specializing in Southern historical past and race relations. He has since held roles comparable to vice chancellor for range and neighborhood and vice provost for range.
Largest transfer of 2022: Being named chancellor after a unanimous vote by the Board of Trustees in November. He would be the first Black individual to serve within the function.
What we’re watching: What he’ll do now that he is secured the management spot.
Steuart and Tom are brothers and the grandsons of Walmart founder Sam Walton, who’re utilizing affect to boost the standard of life of their yard, partially by way of their Runway Group holding firm.
The younger Waltons are serving to construct NWA’s sense of neighborhood by investing in inexperienced areas, artwork and music, out of doors recreation, the culinary scene, engaging actual property growth and superior mobility.
Largest transfer of 2022: Internet hosting the inaugural FORMAT Competition (For Music, Artwork, Know-how) in Bentonville in September.
What we’re watching: What Steuart and Tom plan to do with the Walmart campus. They introduced this 12 months that Blue Crane, a growth firm underneath the Runway Group umbrella, will purchase the prevailing buildings and land as Walmart plans to maneuver staff to a brand new, under-construction campus. They’ve not mentioned what they intend to do with the property.
We even have our eyes on those that might have a giant 2023.
We need to keep in mind two energy gamers who handed away this 12 months.
Go deeper: See all 200 of Axios Native’s Energy Gamers in 2022
One man died in a crash on Interstate 430 in North Little Rock early Saturday morning, according to a report from Arkansas State Police.
Ivan Vallecillo, 18, of Conway died after the 2008 Kia Rio he was driving became disabled in a closed management lane while heading south on I-430, according to the report. A 2015 Ford F-150 also traveling on the interstate struck the rear of the Kia.
A state trooper investigating the crash reported that the weather was clear and the road was dry at the time.
Defensive lineman JaQuentin Madison committed to Arkansas on Sunday following his official visit to Fayetteville.
Madison, 6-3 and 280 pounds, of Alpharetta, Ga., chose Arkansas over offers from Missouri, North Carolina State, Pittsburgh, SMU, Georgia Tech, Kansas and other programs.
He had 75 tackles, 9 sacks, 10 tackles for loss, 17 quarterback hurries, 1 forced fumble, 2 pass deflections and 1 interception returned for a touchdown as a junior.
Madison is rated a 3-star prospect by 247Sports. The three other recruiting services have yet to rate him.
Madison is the 11th commitment for the Razorbacks’ 2025 class.
When the Rev. Jeff Hood entered Missouri’s execution chamber this past week, he saw something hauntingly out of the ordinary: himself.
The window to the death chamber is one-way, meaning witnesses can see inmates but inmates cannot see who is watching them, Hood told USA TODAY, adding that every other execution he’s witnessed in other states has been in a room with a two-way window.
“It’s like a house of horrors,” Hood said. “It’s very, very bizarre.”
Hood walked in to find his friend, David Hosier − a man condemned to die for the 2009 murder of a former lover − strapped to the gurney. Hosier’s final words to the reverend before Missouri executed him: “Give ’em hell, Jeff.” Encouragement for Hood to keep fighting against the ultimate punishment.
As Hood put his hand on Hosier’s shoulder and began to read scripture, the intravenous line to deliver the lethal injection was near Hood’s elbow. Soon the reverend was able to see the pentobarbital − or as he calls it, “poison” − travel to end Hosier’s life.
When time of death was pronounced at 6:11 p.m. on Tuesday, Hosier became the seventh man Hood has seen executed.
In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that spiritual advisers must be allowed into execution chambers if death row inmates want them. Since then, the 40-year-old Hood − who lives in Little Rock, Arkansas with his wife and five children − has made it one of his missions to comfort the condemned in their final weeks, hours and minutes.
“My job is to come into their lives when they have six to three months left to live and become their best friend,” Hood told USA TODAY in an interview shortly after Hosier’s execution. “I become their best friend in order to be their best friend when they die.”
After seven executions, Hood said it doesn’t get any easier. If anything, it’s gotten harder.
“You feel like a murderer,” he said. “I’m called to be there for my guy. I’m called to pray. I’m called to read scripture. For all of my good intentions, I ultimately do nothing to stop it … I sit there and watch someone I love be murdered. In my inaction, I join the team of murderers.
“Being a part of the entire process is moral torture,” he added.
But Hood feels compelled to continue the work. Three inmates have asked him to accompany them to their executions in the next six months, and he works with about two dozen others throughout the country. This despite what he says have been numerous death threats against him and his family.
Why?
“Giving someone a voice, that’s the only thing that can make them feel like a human being,” he said.
While Hood says every execution he’s witnessed is disturbing, he’s particularly haunted by that of Kenneth Eugene Smith, who was put to death by nitrogen gas in Alabama in January for his role in a murder-for-hire plot of a preacher’s wife in 1988.
“He literally was heaving back and forth, his face was hitting the front of the mask,” Hood says. “Mucus and slobber were drizzling down the front of the inside of the mask … It was like his veins all over his body were spidering and that there were ants up on his skin that were moving in every single direction.”
Marty Roney, a reporter with the Montgomery Advertiser − part of the USA TODAY Network − was also among witnesses and reported that Smith “appeared to convulse and shake vigorously for about four minutes after the nitrogen gas apparently began flowing through his full-face mask,” and that “it was another two to three minutes before he appeared to lose consciousness, all while gasping for air to the extent that the gurney shook several times.”
By appearances, lethal injections almost look like medical procedures, Hood said, while the nitrogen gas method “looks like a very vicious, horrible murder.”
Among Smith’s last words before he suffocated: “Tonight, Alabama caused humanity to take a step backward.”
In a statement following Smith’s execution, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall noted that it “marked the first time in the nation – and the world – that nitrogen hypoxia was used as the method of execution.”
The state “has achieved something historic,” he added. Alabama is set to execute another inmate, Alan Eugene Miller, with nitrogen gas in September. Miller, who was convicted of killing three people during two workplace shootings in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1999, is arguing against the method in a lawsuit, saying it’s cruel and unusual punishment.
At the most recent execution Hood attended, that of David Hosier on June 11, he said he read from the Bible as he held the inmate’s shoulder.
As we was reading, Hood says Hosier repeated the phrase, “Give ’em hell,” an apparent reference to Hood’s hope to see the death penalty abolished.
Hosier was convicted in the 2009 shooting death of his former lover, Angela Gilpin, a married mother of two sons. Gilpin was seeing Hosier while she was separated from her husband but had decided to make her marriage work and broke it off with Hosier, who always maintained his innocence.
Hood said that Hosier was 100% convinced of his innocence and that he wasn’t just “putting on a show.” Hood gave Hosier absolution for his sins and did not confess to the crime in his final moments.
While Hood says he was being tortured by his own emotions during the process, his focus was on ensuring Hosier felt love and felt like a human being.
“I think that in the last few weeks, David got a lot of his dignity back,” Hood said.
“I’m the luckiest man on Earth,” Hosier said in a final statement sent to reporters shortly before he was put to death. “I’ve been able to speak the the truth of my innocence … I leave you all with love.”
Contributing: Marty Roney of the Montgomery Advertiser
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