photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Jeremy James Shacklett appears at his trial on Aug. 20, 2024, in Douglas County District Court.

A man accused of threatening multiple people with a realistic paintball gun after pursuing other drivers and cutting them off in traffic is standing trial this week in Douglas County District Court.

Jeremy James Shacklett, 47, is charged with three felony counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, according to charging documents. The charges relate to two incidents in 2023: one on Jan. 1 and one on Jan. 2.

In opening arguments Tuesday, Assistant District Attorney Adam Carey said both of the incidents began as normal traffic issues but that Shacklett chose to escalate each situation by pulling out the gun to scare the other drivers.

“(Shacklett) used intimidation to resolve his conflicts,” Carey said.

Shacklett’s attorney, Cooper Overstreet, on the other hand, said Shacklett was new to the Lawrence area and lived in the van with his young daughter and his dog. Overstreet argued that in both incidents, Shacklett was trying to protect himself, and that while he may have made bad decisions, he didn’t do anything illegal.

Overstreet also said that Shacklett had had some bad experiences in traffic in the past that guided his decisions.

photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Assistant District Attorney Adam Carey on Aug. 20, 2024, in Douglas County District Court.

Carey went into more specifics in his opening statement about the allegations against Shacklett on those two days.

The first incident took place around 8 p.m. Jan. 1, 2023, when two families had just eaten together at 23rd Street Brewery and were leaving in separate cars. On the frontage road ahead of them, a maroon van suddenly slammed on its brakes and came to a stop. The van didn’t move, Carey said, and one of the families — a woman with her two children — drove around it and kept going.

After the first family passed the van, it started following them, tailgating them and honking, Carey said. He said the van ignored a stop sign when making a turn and that its tires squealed as it followed them.

All this time, the other family, a married couple, were following the van out of concern, Carey said.

Carey said the woman whom the van was following was “terrified” because the van was still honking and flashing its lights, blinding her. After the three vehicles turned onto Clinton Parkway, he said the couple sped up and got in front of the van to help the woman get away.

“(The driver) knows that (she) is alone with her two daughters and he puts his car between (her) and the van,” Carey said.

Then, Carey alleged, near the intersection of Clinton Parkway and Crossgate Drive, the maroon van swerved and sped up, striking the couple’s side mirror and cutting them off at the intersection. The van stopped, Carey said, and Shacklett got out carrying what the couple thought was a black firearm — pointed downward but facing the couple’s car in what Carey said was a “ready position.”

When they saw it, the couple sped away past Shacklett, Carey said. He said that as they fled, the wife could see Shacklett raising it as if he were going to fire it.

Overstreet disputed the allegation that Shacklett got out of the van or confronted the couple, but he said that Shacklett did follow the first car and that Shacklett knew now that that was the wrong thing to do.

In the second incident, on Jan. 2, Carey said police received a call about a reckless driver in a maroon van, once again on Clinton Parkway.

The caller told police he had just been cut off in traffic and that the person had nearly hit the front of his car, Carey said. The man told police that he got back in front of the van, but when he looked in his rearview mirror he could see the driver holding a firearm and pointing it right at him, Carey said.

Police obtained traffic camera footage from the intersections where the incidents on both days took place, and Carey said it showed that both incidents involved the same van registered to Shacklett.

When police located Shacklett, Carey said, he gave them what he referred to as a “marker” — a paintball gun replica of a Walther PPQ handgun. Carey said that although the paintball gun was blue, there were no other markings that would indicate it was not a real gun, and in both incidents it was too dark to distinguish the blue color.

photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Attorney Cooper Overstreet on Aug. 20, 2024, in Douglas County District Court.

Overstreet said that in the second incident, Shacklett never pointed the paintball gun at the car ahead of him, but he did say that his daughter had passed the gun to him from the back seat and the other driver may have seen that.

Shacklett was arrested in connection with the charges on April 28, 2023, but has been free since his arrest on a $2,000 own-recognizance bond, meaning he was not required to put up any money to be released from jail. The trial is set to last through Wednesday.