photo by: KU Athletics

Trevor L. Wilson

Updated at 12:24 p.m. Friday

A KU football player who was accused of brandishing a gun in traffic will not face trial for the incident. A judge on Friday in Douglas County District Court found no probable cause that he committed a crime, and the case will be dismissed.

Trevor L. Wilson, 21, of Tallahassee, Florida, was charged with one count of aggravated assault with a handgun, according to charging documents. The charge stems from an incident on Aug. 25 in eastern Lawrence when Wilson was alleged to have stopped in traffic on Haskell Avenue and to have exited his car to threaten another man with a gun.

On Friday, Judge Stacey Donovan reviewed evidence at Wilson’s preliminary hearing, including surveillance video of the Aug. 25 incident, and she determined that the evidence did not support the charge in the case.

Senior Assistant District Attorney David Greenwald argued that Wilson had brandished the weapon in a threatening way by displaying it to the other man. Donovan, however, said the position of the gun, which remained pointed at the ground, did not constitute brandishing a weapon; she additionally cited testimony from the man in the other car, who said he did not believe Wilson intended to fire the gun.

The man in the other car testified that he was southbound on Haskell Avenue at the red light near 23rd Street. The intersection is reduced to one lane of traffic in all four directions because of construction. The man said he saw two cars, later identified as being driven by KU football players, approaching on his passenger side from a parking lot and it looked as though they were going to drive at him and into oncoming traffic.

The man, a City of Lawrence employee, said he saw Wilson say something and gesture, so he rolled down his window to hear. He said Wilson then stood up out of his car and said, “Are we straight? Are we [expletive] straight?” To which the man replied “yes.” Then, he said, Wilson said, “If we’re straight, then look straight.” The man said he then turned his head forward, looking straight ahead, and rolled up his window.

The man said that while Wilson was talking to him, Wilson was behind his car door with his left hand on the doorframe and his right hand holding a gun. The man said Wilson did not point the gun at him or wave it around.

Greenwald, the prosecutor, asked the man what he felt during the interaction.

“I didn’t know what to really think, just that I wanted to leave the situation, but I couldn’t because I was stuck in traffic,” the man said.

The man said Wilson’s car then crossed the street through traffic in front of him into a QuikTrip parking lot while he drove away and called his supervisor, who called police.

A Lawrence police officer, James Scotti, testified that he made contact with Wilson and searched his car with Wilson’s consent. He testified that he found a semi-automatic Stoeger handgun in the car.

Scotti said that during questioning Wilson denied having shown a weapon to the man. The officer asked how the man knew he had a gun, to which Wilson replied, “I don’t know.”

Wilson, represented by attorney Dakota Loomis, was originally charged alongside fellow KU football player Tanaka Artisma Scott Jr., 20, of Lawrence, who was driving nearby in a separate car, but the charge against Scott was dropped after Judge Blake Glover did not find probable cause to charge him.

Scott was suspended from the KU football team for one game while Wilson was suspended for the season.

The Journal-World has reached out to the KU football program for comment on Friday’s hearing and Wilson’s future with the team.