photo by: Mike Yoder

From left, Tyrone J. Carvin, Shawn K. Smith and Ramone Singleton appear during a joint preliminary hearing on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2017, in Douglas County District Court. The three men are charged with murder and other crimes in connection with a Sept. 2, 2017 shooting at the North Lawrence Motel 6.

The Motel 6 murder trial is scheduled to start Monday, Aug. 13 in Douglas County District Court, but with some significant eyewitness issues.

Namely, two of the four known eyewitnesses who are alive won’t be there. People close to them told authorities the men were scared, in part because vehicles followed them home to Topeka after they testified at a preliminary hearing in Lawrence in November.

The district attorney’s office made “extraordinary” efforts to track them down but couldn’t find them to serve subpoenas, Judge Sally Pokorny found Monday. Over arguments by defense attorneys, instead of the men appearing in person, Pokorny said she will allow testimony they gave at a preliminary hearing in November to be read aloud.

Gunfire erupted about 11:30 p.m. Sept. 2, 2017, among a group of nine men who’d been partying inside Room 308 of Motel 6, at 1130 N. Third St. in North Lawrence. The shooting killed 23-year-old Cameron Hooks, of Lenexa, and injured two others.

Charges and previous testimony allege that the three co-defendants and a fourth suspect — who hasn’t been publicly named or charged — suddenly got up from different locations in the room and started firing while trying to rob other men they’d been hanging out with.

Tyrone J. Carvin, 19, of Kansas City, Kan.; Ramone Singleton, 23, of Kansas City, Kan., and Shawn K. Smith, 19, of Kansas City, Mo., are all being held on $1 million bond.

Each is charged with first-degree murder, aggravated battery, aggravated assault and attempted armed robbery.

In May, Pokorny approved pushing back the trial date to give the state more time to locate alleged aggravated assault victim Tanner Marlow and alleged attempted aggravated robbery victim Mathdaniel Squirrel, both of whom lived in Topeka at the time of the incident.

At a pretrial hearing on Monday, a DA’s office investigator and a Lawrence Police Department detective outlined their fruitless efforts to find Squirrel and Marlow.

Those included calling ex-girlfriends, knocking on doors in Topeka, sending messages on social media and reaching out to authorities in other jurisdictions in search of Squirrel to no avail. Squirrel’s bondsman on a case in another county for which he failed to appear told authorities that he didn’t know where Squirrel was, either.

Marlow’s father filed a missing person’s report with Topeka police in April, saying in the report that he feared someone would try to get to his son and kill him, and that in fact he thought his son had already been killed, DA’s office investigator Catherine Born said. She said Marlow is now in a national database for missing persons but has gotten no hits from law enforcement encountering him anywhere.

Marlow’s grandparents, with whom he once lived, are no longer forthcoming with the DA’s office and say they don’t know his whereabouts, Born said. Regarding the upcoming murder trial, they told Born that Marlow “was frightened and that he wanted nothing to do with it.”

Shooting victim Dominick Frye, of Topeka, has been served a subpoena to testify, but he also told authorities he doesn’t know where his friends are.

Detective Kimberlee Nicholson said Frye told her the friends were all followed after the preliminary hearing.

“They were concerned for their safety,” she said.

The second shooting victim didn’t testify at the preliminary hearing — resulting in the judge dismissing all charges involving him — but will testify at the trial.

Laroyce Thomas is expected to be transported to Lawrence from Johnson County, where he’s now jailed on charges of allegedly shooting someone during a robbery there, prosecutor Mark Simpson said.

That information about Thomas, however, won’t be subject to attorneys’ questioning at trial because he has not been convicted, Pokorny ruled. Her ruling was again over objections by defense attorneys, who wanted to be able to highlight alleged criminal activity and possible gang affiliations of Thomas and the state’s other witnesses.

Although the defendants are charged with murder during the commission of armed robbery, defense attorney Forrest Lowry, appointed to represent Singleton, contended that there was no robbery.

“The mystery with this case has always been why the shooting occurred,” Lowry said.

The trial — which will be Douglas County’s third murder trial in just more than a month — is scheduled to last two weeks, through Aug. 24.

Jury selection in the case could take up to two full days, attorneys estimated.

In a murder case with not just one but three defendants, the jury pool will be exceptionally large. Around 100 potential jurors are expected to be brought in before the pool is eventually whittled down to 12 jurors and two alternates, according to Monday’s court discussion. The court may set up remote viewing on a video screen in another courtroom to accommodate overflow seating during the jury selection process.

photo by: Elvyn Jones

Lawrence Police Department officers investigate a fatal Saturday night shooting at Motel 6 in North Lawrence, Sunday, Sept. 3, 2017.