photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Nicholas Beaver is pictured on Friday, Oct. 25, 2024, in Douglas County District Court.

Updated at 6:37 p.m. Friday, Oct. 25

A Douglas County judge on Friday ordered a man to stand trial for second-degree murder in the death of a Lawrence resident who was shot earlier this year in front of the Lawrence Public Library.

Nicholas Beaver, a Topeka man who had stayed at the Lawrence Community Shelter, is accused of killing Vincent Lee Walker, 39, shortly after 5 p.m. on March 6 in the 700 block of Vermont Street.

Prosecutors at Beaver’s preliminary hearing Friday urged the court to bind him over on a charge of first-degree murder, but Judge Stacey Donovan did not find probable cause for that more serious offense.

photo by: Contributed

Vincent Lee Walker

Even though the shooting had occurred in broad daylight on a busy downtown Lawrence street, little was publicly known about the incident until Friday’s hearing because the court had sealed the affidavit for Beaver’s arrest at the request of his attorney, Razmi Tahirkheli.

On Friday, the court heard multiple witnesses describe the scene near the bus stop across the street from the library, 707 Vermont St. Security camera footage from the library, which looked through the library’s lobby and front windows onto Vermont Street, was played in court. The video depicted people coming and going from the library, then, in a small corner of the screen, showed a figure collapsing across the street, apparently after having been shot.

The library’s head of safety and security testified that the library has roughly 60 cameras on the premises, but only the one looking through the lobby showed the incident. A surveillance camera on the nearby parking garage, though, showed footage of a person in the area around the time of the crime wearing the same color of clothes that witnesses had identified Beaver as wearing, Lawrence Police Officer Daniel Palen, who arrested Beaver later that night, testified.

One witness told the court that the victim, Walker, “a guy everybody knows,” had come up to the bus stop carrying a box of his belongings. The witness said Walker set the box in front of him, then a man came up and started taking things out of the box and throwing them on the sidewalk. The witness said this angered Walker, who started yelling at the man. As this was happening, he said, another man rode up on a bike, and Walker started yelling at the man on the bike, causing the man to turn around as if to leave.

Walker then told the man on the bike “don’t say nothing to me,” the witness said, suggesting there was possibly some bad blood between the two. At that point, the man on the bike turned back around and “bam, bam, bam!” Walker was shot, the witness said, though he didn’t hear the man on the bike say anything.

A different witness also said he had been riding his bike near the library and witnessed an argument between Walker and a man when a third man rolled up on a bicycle, pulled out a pistol and fired three times. He also said he observed the shooter pistol-whipping a man at the scene before riding off.

“As fast as it started it was done,” the witness said of the incident.

A man who happened to be driving south on Vermont Street also testified that he saw a person on a bike talking to someone when all of a sudden a gun was pulled and a man was shot. The witness said he got a good look at the gun, describing it as an automatic-style pistol with a stainless-steel finish. He said he noticed the man on the bike following his car and quickly turning west, presumably along Eighth Street.

Shortly after the shooting, a man who was at an auto repair shop on Sixth Street had an encounter with Beaver, whom he identified in court. The man said Beaver, “a random guy,” approached him and told him that he had just had an argument with a man who had spit in his face and that his response had been “pow, pow, pow,” which at first the man thought “was just a (made-up) homeless story.”

The man asked to borrow a lighter, and the witness handed him a distinctive multicolored Clipper lighter with a pineapple on it, which police testified was later found on Beaver. The witness also said the man had a distinctive pair of athletic shoes in a bag, which police said they found in the trash later.

The witness said he decided to call police about the encounter when he saw a report about the shooting on a “scanner app.”

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Lawrence Police Detective David Garcia testifies at the preliminary hearing of Nicholas Beaver on Friday, Oct. 25, 2024.

Detective David Garcia testified that he had an encounter with Beaver near The Merc grocery store about an hour and a half after the shooting but did not have probable cause at that time to arrest him. In ensuing hours, however, he said, evidence accumulated along a “path” between the library and the grocery store at Ninth and Iowa. On this path, police found, with the assistance of a police dog, a gun that had been discarded in someone’s yard in the 600 block of Ohio Street. Police also had received calls suggesting that Beaver was the shooter, Garcia said.

Detective George Baker testified that KBI lab reports indicated that the found gun had DNA on it that matched Beaver’s, as did a bike that police found chained to a pole on the path between the library and The Merc. Baker said another KBI report indicated that the three bullets fired on Vermont Street came from that gun.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Lawrence Police Detective George Baker testifies at the preliminary hearing of Nicholas Beaver on Friday, Oct. 25, 2024.

Police witnesses also testified that they found clothes and the athletic shoes in a trash can at a buffet restaurant at Ninth and Iowa that matched what witnesses said Beaver had been wearing, as well as a baggie of ammunition and a “Tuesday” bracelet that they believed was associated with the Lawrence homeless shelter, where Beaver had recently been and where he reportedly had a handgun in his possession.

After 10 witnesses had testified Friday, Deputy District Attorney David Greenwald told the court, “Everything lines up to show Nicholas Beaver committed this crime,” and he argued that the evidence — particularly Beaver’s leaving and then turning back around after Walker told him not to talk — showed a level of premeditation that amounted to first-degree murder, an argument that Judge Donovan rejected in binding Beaver over on a count of intentional second-degree murder, as originally charged.

Beaver won’t face trial until sometime in the new year. His next court date, a status conference, is Jan. 21.