photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Cir Allen Glover is pictured with courtroom security and his attorney Michael Clark Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024.

Tempers flared Thursday morning outside a Douglas County courtroom, threatening to erupt into violence again, as a crowd exited a hearing for a Lawrence teen who is accused of killing another teen earlier this year.

A similar incident played out in June after the defendant’s first court appearance, necessitating the intervention of sheriff’s deputies, as the Journal-World reported.

Cir Allen Glover, 18, was in court Thursday morning for the first part of his preliminary hearing, at which Judge Stacey Donovan will decide whether there’s sufficient evidence to order Glover to stand trial on a charge of second-degree murder in the death of Isaiah Neal, 17. Donovan did not make a ruling Thursday because the state intends to put on additional witnesses next week.

Donovan did hear from multiple witnesses Thursday, including Isaiah’s mother, Natasha Neal, and law enforcement personnel.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

A woman holds a picture of homicide victim Isaiah Neal, 17, outside the Douglas County Judicial and Law Enforcement Center on Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024.

Neal recounted her experience from the early morning of June 13, when her son was gunned down outside her Lawrence home.

She testified that she was at home with Isaiah and her daughter at 2406 Alabama St. when Glover arrived at the residence shortly before 12:30 a.m. She told the court that Glover and her son had known each other since they were babies and had always gotten along except for an incident at the end of May involving the mother of Glover’s child, which had created friction but which she did not elaborate on.

She said Glover went up to her son’s bedroom, and within minutes she heard a gun go off upstairs. Neal started yelling at the boys and demanded that Glover leave, saying he had no right to disrespect her house. She said Glover left and apologized to her for the disturbance.

Though it wasn’t mentioned at the hearing Thursday, an arrest affidavit in the case had stated that the boys played the gunshot off “as a joke.”

Neal said that Isaiah left the house minutes later, came back in, joked with his sister, and left again.

Neal said she texted Isaiah to get back in the house. She noted that he was on house arrest at the time and was not supposed to leave the residence.

When he didn’t respond, she called him: “Get your butt in the house.”

Isaiah responded “OK, Mom,” Neal said, but he didn’t come back.

She said she called again, at 1:17 a.m., to ask where he was, and he replied, “I’m taking a piss.”

“Boy, you lying,” she said she told him. “You can come in here and pee.” Then she ended the call. Within seconds she heard gunshots. She ran inside and called 911, she said, and she told Rontarus Washington, who was at her house, to go out and see what happened: “That’s my baby. I know that was my baby.”

“I just felt it,” she told the court. “I just knew.”

At that point a neighbor came out and started yelling toward an area at the side of the apartment building, and that’s where her son lay, she said.

Isaiah is one of several Lawrence teen homicide victims in recent years, but Neal told the court that he was not in a gang and that she did not know him to have any current “beefs” with anyone. She said he had recently been under psychiatric care in a locked facility and that he suffered from depression after “losing a lot of friends” to death.

She said she had never seen her son with a gun, but after his death she was shown a picture of him with a handgun.

Lawrence Police Officer Marcellis Mitchell took the stand and told how he raced over to Neal’s house after the shooting was reported. He said he saw a digital note with the call that said: “They killed my son.”

At the scene, he said Washington ran up to him in a “panicked state of mind,” and he and another officer ran to Isaiah, who he said was “riddled with bullet holes from head to toe.”

“I believed Isaiah was dying,” Mitchell told the court, but he still had a slight pulse.

Police at the scene started CPR, and it was arranged for Isaiah to be taken to a nearby park for a helicopter transport to the University of Kansas hospital in Kansas City, Mitchell said, but it turned out that he was “in no condition to be airlifted,” so he was taken to LMH Health, where he was pronounced dead.

Mitchell testified that Neal and Washington had told him the name “Cir,” so he put out a call for police to look for Glover.

An autopsy report was admitted into evidence Thursday, but its findings were not discussed.

Jana Ramsey, a crime scene technician coordinator with the Lawrence police, testified about the evidence that she found at the scene, including three bullet holes on a fence and outside wall, nine spent 9mm cartridge cases, a shoe, a loaded magazine from a gun, a gun light and a purple lighter.

She said she also went into Isaiah’s bedroom, where she saw a bullet hole in a wall and collected an iPad and a cellphone. Additionally, she found a baggie of 63 unspent 9mm gun cartridges in a closet.

She said that a report from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation indicated that the spent cartridges from the scene had come from the same firearm.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Cir Allen Glover is pictured Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024, in Douglas County District Court.

The last witness Thursday was LPD civilian investigator Matt Roberts, who testified about camera footage that he reviewed from the night of the shooting. An apartment complex at 2411 Louisiana St., which is adjacent to the shooting location, contained audio evidence of gunshots being fired at 1:18 a.m. That video was played in court.

Roberts said he then developed a “path” in the area that a suspect could have fled on.

One of the points in that path was Billy Mills Middle School, which also had surveillance camera footage, which was played in court.

In that footage, captured just a few minutes after the shooting, Roberts pointed to the image of a man in a hooded shirt with a light mustache and goatee moving across the school’s driveway. The man appears to be carrying a gun in his left hand and is “cradling it,” as if being careful not to drop it, Roberts said.

Deputy District Attorney David Greenwald, who represented the state along with Senior Assistant District Attorney Ricardo Leal, told the court that a witness who had been subpoenaed to testify Thursday did not show up.

Immediately after Thursday’s hearing, where a man in the court gallery had repeatedly taunted Glover during court recesses, two women got into a mostly verbal altercation outside the courthouse and had to be separated, with one woman being physically restrained by other individuals. Sheriff’s deputies remained on the scene outside until the parties left the premises.

As the Journal-World reported, Glover was charged with second-degree intentional murder the day after the shooting. He was arrested after police received a tip from the public.

Glover, who is represented by appointed attorney Michael Clarke, is in custody on a $1 million bond. The second part of his preliminary hearing is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. Oct. 2.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Sheriff’s deputies helped control an altercation that erupted Thursday, Sept. 24, 2024, outside the courthouse after a preliminary hearing for Cir Allen Glover, who is accused of killing another teen.