16
APRIL 4, 2013
ARKANSAS TIMES
week before her husband’s death, Nikki said, she found out that he was driving every morning from their home in North Little Rock to Reynolds’ home in Ward to work, almost 30 miles one way, a revelation that caused some friction between them because of the amount of gas it took to make the commute. Monica Hoskins said that on Halloween night, she was driving with her son when he received a phone call from Chris Reynolds, who was “furious” because he wanted Ernest to terminate another employee. Her son was calm, professional and apologetic throughout the call, Hoskins said, never raising his voice. After eating breakfast and waiting around for a repairman, Monica Hoskins said, Ernest went to pay a traffic ticket,
it’s built around a gas-operated firing mechanism that bears more in common with an assault rifle than the automatic pistols most cops carry on the beat. If you’ve ever seen “The Matrix,” you’ll recognize it. The agents chasing Neo carry Desert Eagles — hand-cannons that weigh well over 5 pounds when fully loaded with fingertip-sized shells. From where Ernest Hoskins was sitting when Chris Reynolds drew down on him and pulled the trigger during their business meeting, the black eye of the barrel would have looked like an abyss. With the investigative file locked in the prosecutor’s desk drawer and Reynolds’ trial still two months away, it’s hard to know exactly what happened inside Reynolds’ house on Deer Run Drive in
BRIAN CHILSON
“He felt like this job could take him to where he was trying to be,” she said. “He and Chris had discussed a lot of opportunities that were coming up, travel and doing sales with the company. He moved up to a management position in two weeks.” Though Reynolds invited Ernest to bring Nikki to his house for cookouts and get-togethers, Nikki said she was working two jobs at the time and never went. Ernest, on the other hand, seemed to be over there all the time. At least once, she said, Chris, Ernest and another employee went to the firing range to shoot some of the many guns Chris owned. Eventually, Nikki said, Reynolds tried to give Ernest a large caliber handgun — a gun she now believes to be the .44 semi-automatic that later killed him — but she wouldn’t allow it in the house because of their adopted daughter and the baby on the way. After Ernest told Reynolds he couldn’t take the gun, Nikki said Reynolds gave them a set of swords and several large daggers. That odd bit of generosity aside, Nikki said she began to question how Ernest was being paid. “He made sales, and he was supposed to be commissioned off of them, but it seemed like every time he was supposed to receive pay from the commission, it was pushed back and he didn’t get it.” Ernest’s mother, Monica Hoskins, said she also thought something was strange with her son’s employment. He was often broke, she said, and drove the car he’d bought the previous July without tags for months because he couldn’t afford to pay the taxes, even after he started working for Reynolds. When she finally agreed to help him get the paperwork on his car in order, he came back the same week and asked for a small loan to get him by. “I didn’t feel like he was paying him right,” she said. “I asked him, ‘Where’s all your money going, honey?’ ” Monica Hoskins said that though her son started out receiving a paycheck every week, that soon switched to every two weeks. “What job pays you weekly,” she said, “and all of a sudden it turns to every two weeks? How is he paying you? But you’re steady telling me about all these business deals you’re making?” On the morning of Friday, Nov. 9, 2012, Ernest Hoskins showed up at his mother’s house, as he often did, in the Broadmoor neighborhood near the University of Arkansas at Little Rock to eat breakfast. By that time, Monica and Nikki Hoskins had seen the strain that working for Reynell Industries was putting on Ernest, both personally and financially. A
‘WHY?’: Nikki Hoskins.
then headed to Ward for his meeting. Nikki said Ernest — who usually texted her throughout the day, just so she’d know he was thinking about her — called her that afternoon, while she was on a break from her job. “He told me, ‘Well, babe, I’m about to walk into this meeting. I’ll call you as soon as I get out of the meeting. I love you.’ ” Nikki said. “That was the last time I ever talked to him.”
WHAT YOUR HEART DESERVES At almost a foot long, the Israel Military Industries Desert Eagle is one of the largest semi-automatic handguns in the world. Available in several large calibers,
Ward just before 2 p.m. that day. It makes one appreciate how nuanced determining intent in a homicide case is — what peoples’ faces looked like, body language, whether their voices were raised or calm — things that will never translate to an arrest affidavit. Several attempts to reach witnesses Melissa Peoples (now Melissa Gov), Brian Washington and Rachel Watson were unsuccessful. Monica Hoskins said she was able to talk to witness Brian Washington several months ago. According to Hoskins, Washington told her that Reynolds and Ernest were not arguing or angry before Ernest was shot. He recalled Chris telling Ernest that his sales were low, to which Ernest replied with the line in the statement Reynolds
eventually signed: “Why don’t you get off the couch and help us?” After that, all Washington remembered, Hoskins said, was the concussion and flash of the gunshot, which he said knocked him out of his chair. A fuller picture was supplied by Rachel Watson when she appeared in January with Nikki Hoskins in a video interview with thegrio.com, the NBC News website that provides coverage targeted to an African-American audience. Nikki said she and Watson have become friends since Watson reached out to her on Facebook to tell her side of the story. The Arkansas Times left several messages for Watson, but they were not returned. In the interview with The Grio, Watson said that the day of the shooting, she was at Reynolds’ house for a job interview. After she, Washington, Gov, and Hoskins arrived, the five of them went into Chris Reynolds’ kitchen and sat down, then Reynolds began talking to them about their sales. “He started going at Ernest about his sales, and how he wasn’t doing very well with his sales,” Watson told the interviewer. “Then they kind of argued a little bit. That’s when he pulled out his gun [from] right behind him. ... It was underneath his counter in, like, a basket. I didn’t see it until he pulled it out.” At first, Watson said, she thought pulling the gun might be some kind of joke. But that feeling ended when Reynolds pointed the gun at Hoskins and pulled the trigger. When it didn’t go off, Watson said, “he cocked it back and pointed it straight back at his head and pulled the trigger.” Watson doesn’t mention the sound, but in a kitchen, it would have been deafening. The .44-caliber bullet slammed into Ernest Hoskins’ head at near pointblank range. A Crime Lab report cited in the arrest affidavit lists Hoskins’ cause of death as “Injury to Cervical Spinal Cord and Right Common Carotid Artery due to Gunshot Wound of Head,” but the damage done probably doesn’t translate well to paper, either. Watson said that Reynolds ran to the bathroom to get towels, and called the police almost immediately. “We all got up and started freaking out because he’d just shot him,” Watson told The Grio. “The others ran outside along with Chris. He ran outside too. I stayed behind to see if I could help Ernest, to see if he was alive still. After I checked to see if he was still alive, I went outside too.” Watson said that Hoskins was already dead when she checked him. Watson claimed that Reynolds told the three witnesses that they should leave before the police arrived.