Newly surfaced police footage out of Blytheville shows Arkansas State Police Trooper Theodore Henderson allegedly smashing out the back window of an SUV, grabbing 23-year-old passenger Tedrick Washington by his dreadlocks and his arm, dragging him toward the broken window, and then hitting him, not once, but twice, during an arrest that capped off a chase that hit speeds of 130 miles per hour.
The whole thing kicked off just before midnight on August 19th, when Henderson says he clocked a 2023 Infiniti QX50 doing 82 in a 60 near the Big Lake bridge on Arkansas 18. Trooper flips his lights on, and instead of pulling over, the driver, later identified as 25-year-old Adonerus Johnson, allegedly floors it. Henderson says the SUV hit 113 mph, then 130, forcing him to push his own cruiser past 140 just trying to keep up.
According to NEAReport, Blytheville police reportedly threw down spike strips near County Road 239, but that didn’t stop the chase, the SUV blew through a red light at Arkansas 18 and 151 even as its front tire started losing air. Henderson eventually used a tactical vehicle intervention (basically a controlled ram) to knock the SUV over a curb and end the pursuit near North 16th and West Walnut. That’s when things got ugly. Reports say Johnson tried to hop from the driver’s seat to the back and slip out a rear door. Gosnell PD Cpl. Cade Liles pulled his gun on him, then hit him with a Taser, more than once, before finally getting him cuffed. Then Henderson turned his attention to Washington, who’d been riding in the back seat the whole time and, by all accounts, wasn’t the one driving 130 down the highway.
Video shows Henderson ordering him out of the SUV, then busting the rear window with a baton when Washington said he couldn’t get out!
According to Henderson’s own report, he grabbed a handful of Washington’s hair along with his wrist and pulled, and when Washington pulled back and braced against the door, Henderson says the young man “postured up” like he was about to swing. That’s when Henderson punched him in the face.
He wasn’t done. Oncee Washington was pulled from the truck and taken to the ground, Henderson clocked him again , same side, left cheek, while officers wrestled to get his arms behind his back. Liles, who watched it all unfold, said in his own report that Washington was bleeding by the time it was over and that Henderson threw “multiple closed-hand strikes” to his face.
EMS showed up to check on everybody involved, but nobody got carted off to the hospital, at least according to the paperwork.
Washington wasn’t behind the wheel. He wasn’t the one who led police on a 130-mph run through Mississippi County. He caught two charges out of this, obstruction of governmental operations and resisting arrest, for what boils down to not climbing fast enough through a window a cop just smashed open next to his face.
Johnson, the actual driver, blew a 0.17 on his breathalyzer and is facing a laundry list of charges: felony fleeing, DWI, reckless driving, resisting arrest, speeding, improper passing, running a red light, no seatbelt, and unauthorized use of property. A front-seat passenger did everything right, followed commands, and walked away with no charges at all.
As for accountability, Gosnell PD already cleared Cpl. Liles, ruling his gun draw, Taser hits and hands-on force justified under department policy. But that review was about Liles, not Henderson.
So far, there’s no public record of ASP conducting its own use-of-force review on Henderson’s conduct, and Washington hasn’t been able to give his side of the story on record yet.