When Jessica Porter was attacked with a hammer back in November and her friend identified her assailant, she expected he would be promptly arrested. Instead, six weeks later, the transgender Navy veteran was arrested at her home and hauled to the Carroll County Detention Center in handcuffs, and investigation into the alleged attack was dropped.
Carroll County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO) has charged Porter with filing a false report and tampering with an investigation, both Class A misdemeanors.
Porter denies both charges, which she believes stem from confusion over the name of her attacker. When she was attacked outside the Statue Road Inn on Nov. 24, her friend who she was visiting there told her she knew the assailant as “Rider.”
Porter says another friend told her of a man named Joshua Ryder, who fit the description and had a Facebook page expressing extreme and violent views. She assumed he was the perpetrator and reported his name to investigators, who discovered Ryder could not have been involved since he had been in the Crawford County jail since August.
But Porter later learned “Rider” is also the nickname of Floyd Webb, who Porter’s friend identified from a photo lineup as the man involved in the altercation with Porter. Porter said her friend only knew him as Rider at the time. Webb was living at the motel although the manager told investigators he no longer lives there.
According to the report by CCSO Dep. Bobby Engles, Porter sent her friend Facebook photos of Joshua Ryder and asked her if that was her assailant. The friend said it wasn’t. The report says the friend said Porter instructed her to lie and say it was. Porter denies that. The report also says the friend said Porter appeared to be intoxicated on narcotics when the altercation occurred and had scared her, which Porter also denies, saying the witness is a drug addict.
There are several versions of what occurred in the parking lot that night.
In mid-December, when this reporter first started asking questions about the assault, CCSO Lt. Blake Ringberg said he believed there was an assault on Porter, but that it was the result of a fight between two people. Investigators were still trying to get a positive ID, he said.
According to Porter it was not a fight, but an attack. Webb, she said, started yelling at her from his truck and telling her to stay away from his friend’s son, who was a friend of Porter’s, and accused her of selling the boy dope. He then got out of the truck and got in her face. She pushed him away and he came back at her with a hammer, striking her full force in the neck. She told him she was ex-military and he better get back in his truck or she would hurt him. He got back in his truck and started yelling profanities and transphobic slurs, calling her “tranny” and “it.” It was then Porter’s friend came outside and identified the man as Rider.
On Jan. 8, five days after closing the case, investigators spoke with Webb. According to his statement, Webb arrived at the motel to find Porter standing in front of his door and parked in his parking space. When he asked her to move her car she began yelling and threatening him. Porter threatened to kill him and attempted to punch him, but he was able to return to his vehicle and leave the area. Webb said he has since moved to Oklahoma.
Porter says she was not parked in his space and that his statement is untrue, noting he didn’t leave the lot because her friend came out and saw him. She also notes that version does not take into account her neck injury, for which she was treated at Eureka Springs Hospital.
After the altercation, Porter returned to the scene with two friends to look for her attacker. According to the report of Porter’s friend’s interview, one of the friends searching for the attacker wielded a machete and crowbar.
In an interview with investigators on Dec. 30, Porter said she did not know if her friends had weapons when they returned to the scene and had forgotten to mention she had returned with friends. She said when they arrived, two unknown individuals on the second floor of the complex told her she had attacked Webb first, according to the supplemental report. The report states a couple of times that while being questioned, Porter avoided eye contact and stuttered, but also assured officers she was being honest.
After an initial investigation, CCSO’s Engles delivered an affidavit of arrest for aggravated assault for Floyd Webb on Nov. 25 to the Carroll County Prosecutor, and another affidavit on Dec. 5, only to recall it a few hours later. Those affidavits were voided and destroyed, according to the response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
Investigation into the assault was dropped after Porter failed to identify her assailant from a photo lineup, according to the incident report. Porter claims she was shown a single page with six small, black and white, inkjet-printed photos with black smears on the faces, five weeks after the incident. She could not make a positive ID from those.
In response to FOIA request for the photo lineup Porter was shown, CCSO provided large, clear color photos of 6 individuals, each on a separate page.
When the Eureka Springs Independent began making inquiries, both Sheriff Jim Roth and Ringberg gave assurances that Porter’s gender had no bearing on how the case would be treated, that CCSO treats everyone equally. In the supplemental report on Porter’s arrest, however, Engles repeatedly refers to Porter with male pronouns. Both Porter’s birth certificate and driver’s license declare her to be female.
Arrests for filing false reports are rare, according to Carroll County Prosecutor Tony Rogers, who will decide whether to prosecute Porter. “Very few wind up in court,” Rogers, said. “We’re going to examine this case very carefully. We’re going to be very deliberate.”
Attacks on transgender people are rampant. According to the 2015 Transgender Survey of nearly 28,000 American transgender people, nearly half of respondents had been verbally assaulted, and one-in-ten physically attacked in the previous year. In 2016, 27 trans people were murdered. Arkansas does not have enhanced penalties for hate crimes.