Dave ?Stokes? Kids

Dave Stokes, the former managing editor of Fayetteville’s Northwest Arkansas Times, was arrested June 5 by Rogers police on charges of harassment and terroristic threatening.

Stokes, 51, allegedly cursed and threatened children in his Rogers neighborhood, Hyland Park. According to the police report, Stokes chased a 14-year-old boy who was riding a motor scooter and threatened to knock him off the vehicle.

Witnesses said Stokes struck an adult who tried to intervene, according to a June 6 story in The Morning News.

Stokes filed a complaint Monday about the incident saying he had been harassed since moving to Rogers in 1999.

Both charges are misdemeanor offenses.

The Morning News didn’t mention until the last paragraph that Stokes is a former publisher of the Times.

Stokes is best-known for penning a potentially libelous editorial that allegedly lost Dan Coody the Fayetteville mayoral race in 1992. Coody sued, won, then lost the case on appeal. Coody was elected mayor of Fayetteville last year and began serving in that position in January.

“Nothing that [Stokes] could do would surprise me,” Coody told the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal. “He seems to have left a string of very unhappy people in his wake through his life. I hope one of these days he can learn to control himself.”

The Morning News story said Stokes now works “in the financial industry.”