photo by: Mugshot courtesy of the KBI Violent Offenders Registry

Camdon Joe Collins is pictured with the Douglas County Judicial and Law Enforcement Center.

An Oskaloosa man who aided a teen who was wanted in the 2023 killing of a Lawrence boy was found guilty Friday in Douglas County District Court of one count of felony obstruction.

The charge relates to Camdon Joe Collins’ assistance to Derrick Del Reed, then 17, in the aftermath of the March 18, 2023, shooting death of 14-year-old Kamarjay Shaw in the 1300 block of Maple Lane. Reed eventually stood trial for the killing, but was acquitted last spring.

Collins, 21, pleaded no contest to the obstruction charge as part of a plea deal with the District Attorney’s Office. In return for the plea, the DA’s office, represented by Senior Assistant District Attorney Ricardo Leal, dismissed a 2022 case against Collins for battery on a law enforcement officer and agreed not to file a misdemeanor drug case. The office also agreed to terminate a year early the 24-month probation that Collins had been serving for a case involving reckless criminal discharge of a firearm at an occupied vehicle.

In the obstruction case, the punishment is presumptive probation, unless a sentencing report turns up information about Collins’ criminal history that is not yet known. Judge Sally Pokorny on Friday warned Collins that she was not bound by plea negotiations but that she would be bound by the Kansas Sentencing Guidelines and how his criminal history score affected the possible sentence.

It’s not clear exactly what Collins did in the Reed case that amounted to the obstruction statute’s prohibition against unlawfully, knowingly and feloniously harboring, concealing or aiding any person accused of committing a felony. Pokorny did not ask Leal to provide a factual basis for the plea, citing her familiarity with associated cases, including the Reed case, over which she presided. It is known that Collins was one of many young people at the scene after Shaw’s death and reportedly told Reed “don’t use your phone” as Reed fled the scene. Reed turned himself in the next day and planned to argue that he shot Shaw in self-defense before a jury ultimately acquitted him.

Even though Pokorny said in July, regarding an earlier case, that Collins “hasn’t complied with one condition of his probation in over a year,” she granted him an own-recognizance bond of $2,500 in the obstruction case after his defense attorney, John De Marco, requested it and Leal did not object. Collins was expected to be released later Friday or early Monday. During Friday’s hearing, he turned back multiple times to the court gallery to smile, wave and blow kisses to his family.

Pokorny scheduled Collins’ sentencing for Sept. 27. As one condition of his release she ordered him to have no contact with anyone involved in the Reed case.