photo by: Sara Shepherd

Tyrone J. Carvin, of Kansas City, Kan., is handcuffed after a jury convicted him of voluntary manslaughter, aggravated battery and aggravated assault on Monday, Aug. 27, 2018, in Douglas County District Court. Carvin and two other men were originally charged with murder stemming from a triple shooting that killed Cameron Hooks, 23, of Lenexa, on Sept. 2, 2017, at Motel 6 in North Lawrence.

Story updated at 6:50 p.m. Monday, Aug. 27, 2018:

Two men were convicted Monday not of murder as charged, but of the lesser crime of voluntary manslaughter in a fatal shooting at Lawrence’s Motel 6.

The jury couldn’t agree on a verdict for the third defendant, so the judge declared a mistrial in his case and scheduled him a new trial.

Both the victims and the defendants in this case blamed each other with instigating a botched robbery attempt that sparked a barrage of more than two dozen bullets inside the small hotel room, where three men were shot and one of them died about 11:30 p.m. Sept. 2, 2017, at Motel 6, 1130 N. Third St.

Minutes earlier, nine men from Kansas City and Topeka had been in room 308 drinking, smoking marijuana, eating pizza and watching football with plans to go out to a strip club and Massachusetts Street.

photo by: Sara Shepherd

Ramone Singleton, of Kansas City, Kan., is handcuffed after a jury convicted him of voluntary manslaughter, aggravated battery and aggravated assault on Monday, Aug. 27, 2018, in Douglas County District Court. Singleton and two other men were originally charged with murder stemming from a triple shooting that killed Cameron Hooks, 23, of Lenexa, on Sept. 2, 2017, at Motel 6 in North Lawrence.

After hearing eight days of testimony — with numerous breaks for attorneys to deal with behind-the-scenes legal complications — the jury got the case Friday afternoon. After about eight hours of deliberations in all, they delivered their verdict about 3 p.m. Monday in Douglas County District Court.

Jurors convicted Tyrone J. Carvin, 20, and Ramone Singleton, 23, both of Kansas City, Kan., of voluntary manslaughter for fatally shooting 23-year-old Cameron Hooks, of Lenexa. Carvin and Singleton also were convicted of aggravated battery for shooting another man and aggravated assault for threatening a third man with a gun.

Sentencing for Carvin and Singleton was scheduled for Oct. 10. According to the district attorney’s office, they each could face up to 247 months, or about 20 years, in prison for the voluntary manslaughter convictions.

On those same counts, the jury couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict for Shawn K. Smith, 19, of Kansas City, Mo. Judge Sally Pokorny declared a mistrial for Smith and scheduled a new trial for him to begin Jan. 22.

Smith himself took the stand last week, saying that came to Lawrence with his co-defendants that night, but that he didn’t have or fire a gun. He said he was wearing “house shoes,” or slide-style sandals, that fell off as he ran from the room in fear after the shooting started.

photo by: Sara Shepherd

Shawn K. Smith of Kansas City, Mo., appears on Monday, Aug. 27, 2018, in Douglas County District Court after jurors couldn’t agree on a verdict and the judge declared a mistrial in his case. Smith and two co-defendants originally were charged with murder stemming from a triple shooting that killed Cameron Hooks, 23, of Lenexa, on Sept. 2, 2017, at Motel 6 in North Lawrence. The co-defendants, including Ramone Singleton, of Kansas City, Kan., pictured in the background, were convicted of voluntary manslaughter.

Smith’s attorney, Gary Long, said in his closing arguments that Smith was “just a guy in the back seat” who didn’t premeditate or prepare for a robbery.

“He’s a kid looking to meet girls on a Saturday night, and he’s got on flip flops,” Long said. “He goes along, and he ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time, presumably with the wrong people.”

The jury acquitted all three defendants of charges that they tried to rob and threatened another man with a gun. The alleged victim of those charges, Mathdaniel Squirrel, didn’t testify in person at the trial — the district attorney’s office couldn’t find him.

Prosecutors C.J. Rieg and Mark Simpson had asked the jury to find all three defendants guilty as charged of first-degree felony murder, because they said Hooks died during an attempted armed robbery that they orchestrated.

In her closing arguments Friday, Rieg painted the victims like sitting ducks. Only one victim, Squirrel, escaped out of the room as the shooting began.

“Dominck Frye, Tanner Marlow, Laroyce Thomas and Cameron Hooks were trapped, in Lawrence, in Motel 6 room 308, and were shot 17 times,” Rieg said. “There was no escape.”

Hooks was shot five times, fatally. Frye, 23, of Topeka, was shot four times. Thomas, 21, of Kansas City, Kan., was shot eight times — though the defendants were not charged in Thomas’ shooting because he didn’t show up to testify at the preliminary hearing. Thomas also refused to testify at trial, telling the judge he didn’t want to incriminate himself in cases he has pending against him in Johnson County.

Defense attorneys said the situation was the other way around, arguing that any of their clients who shot did so in self-defense because the other group tried to rob them first. Carvin, who also took the stand, said Hooks and Thomas pulled guns, tried to rob him and his friends, so he fired back as he ran out.

photo by: Sara Shepherd

Tyrone J. Carvin of Kansas City, Kan., looks over at his attorney, Michael Clarke (left), on Monday, Aug. 27, 2018, in Douglas County District Court, where a jury convicted Carvin of voluntary manslaughter, aggravated battery and aggravated assault. Carvin and two other men were originally charged with murder stemming from a triple shooting that killed Cameron Hooks, 23, of Lenexa, on Sept. 2, 2017, at Motel 6 in North Lawrence.

Carvin is represented by appointed attorney Michael Clarke and Singleton by appointed attorney Forrest Lowry.

“The victims in this case are really the three men who got charged,” Lowry said in closing arguments. “They are lured into this motel room, and then they become victims of attempted robbery.”

The judge, in her instructions to the jury on Friday, listed various legal categories of killings that the defendants could be convicted of, from first-degree murder down to involuntary manslaughter.

Pokorny defined a finding of voluntary manslaughter in this case as knowingly killing Hooks on an unreasonable but honest belief that the circumstances justified deadly force in self-defense, or in the defense of another.