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A man whose northwest Arlington home was spray-painted with a racial slur in 2007 was in jail Monday for city code violations and misdemeanor assault.
Broderick Gamble was brought into custody after Arlington police stopped him in traffic early Saturday evening, police said.Officers were called at about 7 p.m. to a report of a suspicious person at Gamble's home on Ross Trail, said Tiara Richard Ellis, Arlington police spokeswoman. The report stated that a person was moving items and coming and going in a pickup truck, Ellis said.The officers followed the truck and realized that the driver may be Gamble, who had been sought on warrants for earlier citations, so they stopped him in the 500 block of Randol Mill Road, about a mile from the home on Ross Trail.He was taken into custody peacefully, Ellis said. Gamble shared the home with Kay "Silk" Littlejohn, who was not in the truck and was not arrested, Ellis said.Gamble had earlier said they were working on the home again and hoped to move in by Thanksgiving.The early citations were for parking vehicles in the grass, not having insurance and leaving a vehicle propped up on jacks, according to the court records. In December 2007, Littlejohn was hit in the head with a 2-by-4 board and was threatened by a neighbor who also yelled racial slurs. Grace Head, the attacker, was scheduled to be released from the Tarrant County Jail at midnight Monday, according to 396th District Judge George Gallagher, who sentenced her on Aug. 10 to 180 days in jail.Jail inmates receive two days credit for every day served and Head already had credit for several days in jail before she was sentenced, the judge said. The early-release program is for people who demonstrate good behavior and a willingness to work in the jail, said sheriff’s spokesman Terry Grisham.Soon after the 2007 attack, Gamble and Littlejohn found the words "Kill" and "Die [n-word]" in red paint on their garage doors. They said they wanted to donate the defaced garage door to the Slavery and Civil War Museum in Selma, Ala. But city officials wanted the slurs removed immediately, calling them "highly offensive and likely to incite hostile reactions."The officials claimed they gave the couple ample time to remove the graffiti and sued in state district court for permission to paint over it.Gamble was ticketed in March 2008 for assaulting a city code officer who came to paint over the graffiti. A jury found him guilty of the assault charge and of two code violations last year, but he has not paid the fines.Gamble and Littlejohn have said that they went to court to reschedule their hearings on the legal issues but were never given a new court date.Gamble has also said he requested a new trial for his assault conviction but that his request has been repeatedly denied. He said that he would contact his attorney about the warrants.According to Arlington jail records, Gamble was being held Monday on bonds totaling $922, including $481 for not having insurance and $441 for the assault charge. Jail records indicated that he was being given "time served" for the two warrants on the code violations.
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