Police said Wednesday that DNA evidence implicates a man who’s charged in the deadly shooting earlier this year outside a downtown night club.

But defense attorneys say that amid the yelling and alcohol-fueled posturing that led to the shooting Feb. 5 outside the Granada, 1020 Mass., there’s room for confusion about who really fired the shots.

“The identity of the alleged shooter is going to be a very contested issue in this case,” Defense attorney Mark Manna said during a preliminary hearing for suspect Rashawn T. Anderson.

Anderson is charged with shooting and killing Robert E. Williams, 46, after a concert headlined by Williams’ nephew, Denver-based rap artist Doe. The shooting heightened concerns about safety at downtown clubs and led to an ongoing debate about what the city should do to improve security.

Wednesday was the first day of a two-day hearing to determine whether there’s enough evidence for Anderson to stand trial.

A key piece of evidence in the case is a video filmed outside the Granada minutes before the shooting by a contractor from the hip-hop label. In the video, Williams can be seen wearing a long black coat and bowler-style hat as he argues loudly with a group of men, and Anderson can be seen standing on the fringes of the group involved in the argument.

Williams’ widow, LaTonia Coleman, testified that the argument began when a man Williams didn’t know interjected himself in a money-related argument Williams was having with a female acquaintance. It soon escalated into yelling and cursing between the two strangers.

“Robert had a thing about people being in his business. He just didn’t tolerate it,” Coleman said.

She said that at one point in the argument, her husband pulled out a knife and held it behind his back, concealed under the flaps of his long leather coat. When the argument escalated, Anderson can be seen in the video talking to another man, leaving the area to walk south and coming back a few moments later.

But the argument was broken up around that time. Coleman said she and her husband left the sidewalk and went to the rear of the Granada to try to meet a limousine that was driving to Kansas City for an after party.

When the limousine wasn’t there, they drove around the block, and she let her husband out of the car to ask about the limo. Moments later, she said, she heard the shots, turned and saw her husband run from the Granada and collapse in the street.

Williams’ nephew, Bryce Johnson, testified Wednesday that he saw the shooting from a distance and watched as the shooter ran and got into a light-colored sedan. He pointed out Anderson in court as the shooter.

“I know who I saw,” he said.

Eyewitnesses gave police a partial license-plate number for the sedan. Police tracked the license plate to Topeka and found the owner, who had been at the club that night but said she’d loaned her car to someone else.

Many of the people who had been on the sidewalk before the shooting didn’t come forward to police. So detectives obtained the video from the record label and worked with Topeka police to identify the people shown in it, Lawrence Police Detective Lance Flachsbarth testified.

They also found witnesses using a “party pic” photo from the Granada that they found in the Oldsmobile’s glove compartment.

Lawrence Police Detective Zach Thomas testified that crime-scene investigators recovered four bullets: one on the ground on Massachusetts Street, one in the alley behind the Granada, one from Williams’ body and one on the floor of the Lawrence Memorial Hospital emergency room, where Williams went for treatment.

On the day of Anderson’s arrest Feb. 22, police went to a field on U.S. Highway 40 west of Lawrence and found a .38 caliber revolver lying on the ground. They swabbed the gun for DNA and sent the gun and bullets to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation for testing.

A KBI lab report said two of the bullets – the one found on the floor at the ER and the one found on Massachusetts Street – appeared to have come from the gun found in the field. Two swabs from the gun matched Anderson’s DNA profile, the KBI found.

The hearing will continue today.