Investigators spent nearly two years trying to find Jason A. Smith on suspicion of a Texas murder. As things turned out, he was only a stone’s throw away.

Lawrence Police arrested Smith, 23, late Thursday night after they intervened in an altercation that started when a trio of Tonganoxie teenagers threw rocks at the car in which he was riding.

“Sometimes people get caught in strange situations,” Douglas County Dist. Atty. Charles Branson said Friday afternoon.

The sheriff’s department in Fort Bend County, Texas – southwest of Houston – said Friday that Smith had been wanted in connection with the 2003 murder there of 19-year-old Daryl Hayes.

The Fort Bend Star newspaper reported that on Aug. 8, 2003, Hayes was found dead in his car of a gunshot wound to the head, after the vehicle had careened through a Mission Bend, Texas, subdivision, through a resident’s yard and into a telephone pole.

Smith was soon identified as a suspect in the case. Authorities said they thought he might travel to Wichita, but the trail went cold until Thursday evening.

Police said Smith was riding in a Mercury sedan about 10:50 p.m. in the 900 block of New Hampshire Street when a rock fell from above and hit the windshield. Smith and the driver of the car, a 24-year-old Lawrence man, looked up and saw people peeking over the edge of the nearby city parking garage, said Capt. David Cobb, a Lawrence Police spokesman.

Jason A. Smith, 23, makes a first appearance in the Douglas County Jail hearing room. Smith was arrested Thursday in Lawrence after it was discovered he was wanted in connection with a 2003 slaying in Texas.

The men drove into the garage, saw three Tonganoxie teens running, and began chasing them. When one of the teens fell, the car’s driver got out and grabbed him, and Smith began striking him with a broom, Cobb said.

Police came to the scene after a witness saw the beating in progress. Officers began sorting out what happened and eventually saw an open container of alcohol in the Mercury sedan, Cobb said.

A further search revealed marijuana and a loaded handgun, he said. Smith initially gave police an alias – Terry L. Smith – but eventually officers learned his true name and found he was wanted on the murder warrant.

Friday afternoon, Smith made a first appearance on local charges of battery and obstructing the duty of a police officer. Judge Robert Fairchild also set bond at $200,000 in Smith’s extradition case, and scheduled a hearing for June 6.

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No charges have been brought against the Tonganoxie teens, but Branson said they won’t be given leniency just because their alleged delinquency resulted in an arrest in a murder case.

“We have not received a report with regard to charges of those people yet,” Branson said. “We’ll still look at that independently.”