Police investigate Wednesday morning at the scene of an overnight fatal shooting at 1129 Connecticut St.

Police are investigating a deadly shooting that happened outside an East Lawrence home after a resident reportedly fought with a stranger who showed up on his porch in the middle of the night.

Shortly after 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, police responded to a house in the 1100 block of Connecticut Street, where officers found a 32-year-old Lawrence man — later identified as Trevor J. Mohawk — with gunshot wounds, said Officer Drew Fennelly of the Lawrence Police Department.

Mohawk was driven by ambulance to a hospital, where he died, according to police.

Shortly before 1:30 a.m. the residents of the house — a 44-year-old man and a 45-year-old woman — were awakened by sounds of someone on their front porch, Fennelly said.

photo by: Nick Krug

An investigator documents evidence on the porch at 1129 Connecticut St. at a residence where a 32-year-old man was fatally shot early Wednesday.

The male resident armed himself with a gun, went outside and encountered Mohawk on the porch, Fennelly said.

“The subsequent contact between the two men escalated into a physical confrontation, which resulted in the decedent suffering fatal gunshot wounds and the homeowner suffering injuries consistent with a violent confrontation,” Fennelly said.

The resident and Mohawk did not know each other, police said.

Police have interviewed the resident, who was taken to a hospital for examination of his injuries and released, police said.

No one has been arrested, and police are not searching for suspects, Fennelly said late Wednesday morning.

The police investigation remains ongoing.

Fennelly said he could not answer whether Mohawk had a gun at any point during the incident. “That’s part of the investigation that’s still being determined,” Fennelly said.

Throughout Wednesday morning, police investigators were at the house taking photos outside and placing yellow evidence markers, including several on the front porch and on the steps and yard nearby.

Neighbors said they did not know the man later identified as Mohawk or what he may have been doing at the house at 1129 Connecticut St.

Several neighbors said the couple living at the house, who they believe are military members, kept up the property well and that there hadn’t been any problems there. In years past, prior to the current residents, however, there had been trouble at the house including suspected drug activity, one longtime neighbor said.

Next-door neighbor Jenny King said she was awake feeding her baby when she heard three gunshots.

Police showed up quickly after that, maybe about two minutes later, King said.

King said she heard officers yelling, “Get on the ground,” but she wasn’t sure to whom. She stayed inside and tried looking out her window but didn’t see anything, she said.

It was “pretty scary,” King said.

Nadi Chenouda, who lives on the other side of the house, said his mother had been sleeping in their living room when she heard a “big loud noise,” maybe like somebody fighting and pounding on the side of the house.

His mother then woke up Chenouda and his father, he said. Chenouda said the police were already there when he got up, and that he looked out the windows but couldn’t make out what was going on.

“It’s 2 o’clock in the morning,” he said. “You can’t see.”

Police consider this a homicide investigation — as in any shooting death that’s not a suicide — and will forward their case to the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office for consideration of charges, Fennelly said.

“The investigation in a circumstance like this is to determine what the facts are surrounding it,” Fennelly said. “We don’t make the determination whether or not a shooting was justified.”

Mohawk had lived in Lawrence for years — including in the neighborhood where he was shot.

He had attended Haskell Indian Nations University and previously called Stockbridge, Wis., home, according to a Journal-World article quoting him in 2007.

In more recent years, Mohawk had lived in at least two places within a few blocks of where Wednesday’s shooting took place, according to court records listing his address.

Other than a misdemeanor battery charge in 2013 that was dismissed after he completed a diversion program, Mohawk had no criminal record in the county, according to Douglas County District Court records.

Longtime Haskell journalism instructor Rhonda LeValdo said Mohawk was in Haskell’s media communications program, and she recalled him as a talented cameraman.

photo by: Conner Mitchell

Some flowers with a card are shown tucked into the handle of Jefferson's door on Wednesday, April 4, 2018.

“He was a great videographer; he was just really good at what he did,” she said.

LeValdo said Mohawk was a large person with an outgoing personality, which he used to put people at ease when filming them.

“He was just always laughing or making people laugh,” LeValdo said.

LeValdo said Mohawk worked at Jefferson’s restaurant in downtown Lawrence. The restaurant was closed for the day Wednesday, with a sign on the door saying it had “lost one of our crew members last night.”

“We are a family here and we are all taking it pretty hard,” the note on the door said.

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