A man who said he was a good Samaritan has become a suspect in the potentially deadly beating of a homeless man.

Ivan D. Prentup, 25, appeared Wednesday in Douglas County District Court on charges of aggravated battery and aggravated robbery — a day after telling the Journal-World in an interview he’d tried to help the victim in the case, Alan Cannon, but had been turned away.

Cannon, 57, was found beaten Monday night outside a homeless shelter near 10th and Vermont streets and later was flown to a Kansas City-area hospital. He is in intensive care, and doctors don’t know whether he’ll survive, a prosecutor said Wednesday during Prentup’s court hearing, which was conducted on closed-circuit television from the Douglas County Jail.

“I didn’t mean to hurt the guy that bad,” Prentup, a resident of the Salvation Army Shelter, 946 N.H., said during the hearing.

Lawrence Police spokesman Sgt. Mike Pattrick said police believed Cannon and Prentup were in an altercation before the beating. Cannon was robbed of $10, Pattrick said.

Police arrested Prentup on Tuesday afternoon. Earlier that day, he’d said in an interview that he was walking toward downtown when he saw Cannon and heard him calling for help.

“He was in the snow, and I was trying to pick him up,” Prentup said.

Prentup said that Cannon then told him to go away — but still threw him a white, blood-stained hat.

6News reporter/anchor Janet Reid contributed to this report.