photo by: Mugshot courtesy of the Kansas Department of Corrections

Chester Wendell Brockman is pictured with the Douglas County Judicial and Law Enforcement Center.

A Douglas County jury on Friday convicted a man of a 2021 armed robbery at a Lawrence home where a woman and her toddler were living.

The defendant, Chester Wendell Brockman, 51, of Lawrence, was charged with one felony count of aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon and one felony count of aggravated burglary. He was convicted on both counts.

The charges related to an incident on June 30, 2022, in the 3000 block of Bainbridge Circle when Brockman and Marckus Trey Sanders, 29, of Kansas City, Kansas, were accused of forcing their way into a home and holding a woman and her 2-year-old child at gunpoint to take money and other items from the home, as the Journal-World reported.

Brockman’s trial began on Wednesday, and the jury started deliberating Friday morning before returning a guilty verdict in the early afternoon.

At trial, Detective Kimberlee Nicholson testified that she interviewed the victim immediately after the incident and that the woman said that she was upstairs in the bedroom of her townhome and heard a knock on the door. The woman went downstairs and put her toddler on the couch while she opened the door. Nicholson said the woman thought it might be maintenance workers who were working on the neighboring house.

However, when the woman opened the door, an older man, later identified as Brockman, asked to buy some marijuana from her, Nicholson said. The woman told the man that he had the wrong house, and the man responded by pulling out a pistol and forcing the woman inside while demanding she tell him where the marijuana was.

The woman told Nicholson that she directed the man to some totes in the garage, where the man began to rummage. The man then asked the woman where the money was. The woman took the man upstairs to a bedroom, where the woman had thousands of dollars in cash.

When the woman and the man came back downstairs, another man was in the house wearing a ski mask. When the two men began to talk, the woman told police, she saw an opportunity to escape, grabbed her daughter off the couch and ran to the house next door, where she called police and her boyfriend.

Nicholson said the woman told her the men had taken a few thousand dollars while her boyfriend, who had searched the house before police arrived, told Nicholson that the men had taken around $15,000 in cash. Investigators later found $16,000 in cash in a shoe box in the woman’s bedroom.

Detective M.T. Brown testified that he and other investigators gathered video evidence from traffic cameras across the city and surveillance video from two hotels near the woman’s townhome.

The state, represented by Senior Assistant District Attorney David Greenwald and Assistant District Attorney Samantha Foster, showed some of that video to the jury. Brown said that the video showed a black Volvo pull into the parking lot of the Lawrence Suitel, 2907 W. Sixth St., and Brockman and Sanders exiting the vehicle and then returning to it with Brockman carrying an object investigators believed to be a firearm and Sanders carrying a bag.

Brown said that Sanders jumped into the driver’s seat and immediately began to drive away with Brockman in the passenger seat. Investigators were able to track the Volvo to North Lawrence, and police found the car parked at a house in the 700 block of Walnut Street, where they set up a stakeout.

Officer Kevin Henderson said that he and his patrol service dog Mac searched the backyard of the woman’s townhome and found a section of the privacy fence broken in a way as though someone may have jumped over it. He said he went to the other side of the fence and found a loose $50 bill on a walkway between the woman’s fence line and the nearby hotels.

Henderson said he was unable to find any other evidence, then got word that the suspects’ vehicle had been identified from surveillance footage and located. He waited for information from the officers stationed in unmarked patrol vehicles watching the house and car. When Brockman left the house as a passenger in another vehicle, Henderson and other officers stopped the car a few blocks from the house and arrested Brockman without incident.

Henderson said that Sanders left the house sometime later in the Volvo but when they tried to pull Sanders over, Sanders led officers on a chase through the city. He said during the chase a sheriff’s deputy employed a tactical maneuver that caused Sanders to crash. Sanders was then arrested.

Henderson said they found a bag with over two pounds of vacuum-sealed packaged marijuana and $2,530 in a bag in the trunk of Sanders’ car.

At the Lawrence Police headquarters, Brown testified, he interviewed Brockman after the arrest and showed him images from the surveillance footage. Brown said Brockman identified himself and his nephew, Sanders, in the video. Brockman then told police “I got nothing to hide” and that he was visiting a woman at the hotel.

Brockman, who said he cannot read, write or drive, took the stand on Thursday, and his story was no longer that he visited a woman at the hotel. Instead he testified that he went with Sanders to cash his Social Security check; after the check was cashed, Sanders asked Brockman if he wanted to buy some marijuana, to which Brockman said yes.

Brockman said that Sanders set up a deal with a man at the house on Bainbridge Circle, and Sanders instructed Brockman to wear gloves because the dealer preferred it. Brockman said they parked at the hotel where they were seen on surveillance video and he walked through the alley and around to the house on Bainbridge Circle per the directions of the dealer while Sanders waited at the car.

Brockman said that he knocked on the door and a woman answered. He asked to buy some marijuana and the woman told him he had the wrong house.

“Then I heard a bunch of commotion,” Brockman said.

Brockman said that he heard someone come in the backdoor of the townhome and the woman began screaming, grabbed her child and ran past him. Brockman said he then saw Sanders run past him. He said Sanders ran past him to the car and he chased Sanders asking what had happened.

Greenwald asked if Sanders was wearing a ski mask when he ran by Brockman at the house, to which Brockman said that he saw a man in a ski mask but he did not believe it was Sanders; he said everything happened very quickly. Brockman said that Sanders had a bag with him when they got back into the car, but Brockman said he didn’t think anything of it at the time.

He went back to the residence on Walnut Street and went about his day until his arrest.

Lawrence police recently asked for the public’s help in locating Sanders in connection with the robbery. Both he and Brockman were being held on a $100,000 cash or surety bond after their arrests. Court records indicate that in November of 2022, the state was forced to dismiss the charges against Sanders without prejudice, meaning they could be refiled, when the court denied the state’s request to continue Sanders’ preliminary hearing because the prosecutor was sick and Sanders had already been in custody for four months, according to court records. The state later refiled burglary and armed robbery charges, identical to Brockman’s charges, against Sanders, and a warrant is still pending.

photo by: Douglas County Sheriff’s Office

Markcus Trey Sanders

Sanders was immediately released by Douglas County to Leavenworth County in connection with a 2022 drug distribution case and posted a $10,000 surety bond. He failed to appear for court in that case in January of 2023, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. He remains at large.

After the verdict was read on Friday, Brockman was returned to the Douglas County Jail pending sentencing.

Brockman has multiple felony convictions in Douglas County, including three theft convictions in 2015, aggravated battery in 2013 and multiple felony drug convictions, according to the Kansas Department of Corrections.