GATEWAY, Ark. -- The town of Gateway lies on US Highway 62, a two-lane highway in the northwest corner of Arkansas, less than a mile from the Missouri border in the Ozarks.

As of the 2020 census, only 436 people lived there. It’s the kind of town where everybody knows everybody, locals say.

Which might explain how, in 2017, when a detective responded to reports of a man who had been shot and killed sitting in his truck on the side of the road, a witness was able to immediately identify the shooter.

“His name is Grant Hardin,” the witness told the Benton County Sheriff’s Office detective, according to a probable cause affidavit.

The witness told the detective that Hardin used to work for the Gateway police department and that he’d known Hardin all his life.

‘An evil, evil man’

“To know that he is out on the loose is very scary,” Cheryl Tillman said.

Hardin pleaded guilty to first-degree murder for the death of Tillman’s brother, James Appleton, in February 2017, according to court documents.

He was serving a 30-year sentence for the murder of Appleton as well as two 25-year sentences for two counts of rape when he escaped the North Central Unit prison in Calico Rock on Sunday afternoon.

Calico Rock and Gateway are less than a three-hour drive apart and separated by miles of fields and tree-lined roads.

For Tillman, news of the jailbreak brought back bad memories of her brother’s murder and was “like reliving it all over again,” she said.

“He’s just an evil, evil man,” Tillman said. “I’m sure the people here in Gateway are worried about him breaking out of prison after what he’s done.”

Hardin was accused of shooting Appleton, who worked for the City of Gateway’s water department, in the head while driving down a road approximately half a mile from his home, documents show.

Appleton had been on the phone with Tillman’s husband, Andrew Tillman, who was the mayor of Gateway at the time.

Andrew Tillman told the detective investigating the murder that on his brother-in-law’s end of the call he heard what sounded like a loud slammed door and “that was it,” according to a probable cause affidavit.

Hardin’s escape has been tough on him, according to his wife.

“He just wants it to end,” Cheryl Tillman said. “It’s a lot on him since he was on the phone with James when the gun went off.”

Hardin’s court-appointed attorney in the murder case, Shane Wilkinson, told CNN he hasn’t heard from Hardin since his escape but has been in contact with local law enforcement, who have been conducting safety checks on his home and business since Hardin broke out. Documents show Hardin was frustrated with Wilkinson following his guilty plea, saying he had wanted to withdraw it.

Two years after pleading guilty to murder, Hardin pleaded guilty to two counts of rape after his DNA, which was entered into the Arkansas DNA database following his murder plea, was connected to the 1997 rape of schoolteacher Amy Harrison in the nearby city of Rogers, court documents show.

Hardin’s attorney in that case declined to comment to CNN about the escape.

While in prison in 2019, Hardin completed a program on anger management, prison records show.

“He’s a sociopath,” former Benton County prosecutor Nathan Smith told CNN affiliate KHBS.

Smith was prosecutor during both the murder and rape convictions.

“He’s extremely dangerous,” Smith said. “He’s already proven that he has no moral core or center that would prevent him from doing anything.”

The former police chief held grudges, the mayor said

Hardin, 56, was briefly the police chief of Gateway in 2016 and had a slew of various law enforcement jobs in the region – many of which ended with him being fired or forced to resign, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette reported. At the time of the murder, he was a correctional officer at the Northwest Arkansas Community Correction Center in Fayetteville, about an hour south of Gateway, according to the Gazette.

After four months as Gateway’s police chief, the city council recommended he be relieved of duty, according to Cheryl Tillman.

Now Gateway’s mayor, Cheryl Tillman was on the city council when Hardin was dismissed.

“We needed to let him go because of the way that he was treating the citizens here in Gateway,” she said.

Hardin didn’t take criticism well and was quick to anger, she added.

“He was very hard to get along with. I felt like he held grudges a lot,” Tillman said. “You never knew what he was going to do.”

A convicted killer on the lam

As of Wednesday morning, Hardin was still on the loose.

“The search is still primarily focusing on the north central part of the (state) with leads being followed up on wherever they are received,” said Rand Champion, a spokesperson for the Arkansas Department of Corrections.

Officials are also investigating the events that led up to the escape, which includes an internal investigation, Champion said.

Tillman said she was glad Benton County authorities are helping patrol the town while Hardin is on the lam.

“I’m very concerned for our citizens,” she said.

While she is sure that “everybody in the town is a little nervous,” she said she’s also sure authorities will capture Hardin eventually.

The mayor’s message for the people of Gateway is to be vigilant, lock doors and call the police if they see anything suspicious.

Her message to Hardin is, “Don’t come around here, because it won’t be pretty.”

The-CNN-Wire
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