NASHVILLE – A Howard County man who threatened several southwest Arkansas mayors in 2015, including the  mayors of Prescott and Hope,  has been arrested again. Maverick Bryan, 62, with a rural Nashville address, has been charged in Howard County Circuit Court with Possession of Firearms by Certain Persons following an October 23rd traffic stop.

Howard County Deputy Trent Coffman conducted a stop when he observed a vehicle traveling faster than the posted speed limit. A second deputy, Greg Parker with K-9 Apollo, conducted an open air search and Apollo allegedly gave a positive alert for narcotics. Bryan reportedly told the deputies that a friend had been in the vehicle and “might have had an illegal substance.”

Deputies allegedly located a Ruger .22 magnum pistol in the center console and were advised by their dispatcher that Bryan had been convicted of a felony in the past. Bryan was then arrested and taken to the Howard County Jail where 16 .22 magnum bullets were allegedly found in his pocket.

In 2016, Bryan was indicted by a federal grand jury on seven counts of mailing threatening communications. Bryan mailed letters to the mayors of seven different cities within the state of Arkansas containing a threat to injure said mayors. The mayors of Hope, Nashville, Murfreesboro, Prescott, Ashdown, Lewisville and De Queen received the letters in 2015. Bryan plead guilty as part of a plea agreement to charges of threatening the seven local mayors with hanging, if they didn’t meet his demands of ‘putting prayer and the Ten Commandments’ back in schools.

In the letters, Bryan also demanded the mayors ‘no longer honor the votes of anyone who is homosexual, Muslim, socialist, communist, atheist, or worships any other God than Jesus Christ.

In August 2017, Bryan was sentenced to 16 months in federal prison after he pleaded guilty to mailing the letters.