photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Nicholas Beaver, right, is pictured with defense attorneys Angela Trimble and Razmi Tahirkheli at his murder trial Tuesday, July 22, 2025, in Douglas County District Court.

“You got the wrong person, bro.”

That’s what Nicholas Beaver told a detective after his arrest on the night of March 6, 2024.

Thirty-nine-year-old Vincent Lee Walker had been shot dead in front of the Lawrence Public Library earlier that day, and Beaver was denying involvement.

A year later, though, Beaver’s attorney would acknowledge to a jury that Beaver was not “the wrong person” at all. He had indeed shot Walker, but it was in self-defense, the attorney, Razmi Tahirkheli, claimed.

On Tuesday, the second day of Beaver’s first-degree murder trial, Tahirkheli fought to keep the jury from knowing about the earlier denial, but Judge Stacey Donovan overruled his objection, saying the statement was admissible because Beaver had made it voluntarily to police.

Donovan also allowed into evidence, over Tahirkheli’s objection, a video of an April jail visit between Beaver and two women. In the video, Beaver casually tells the women: “I killed the (N-word), but he asked to be killed. He was stepping, and I was stepping harder.”

Parts of that video were redacted so the jury couldn’t hear them, but at a hearing earlier in the day outside the jury’s presence, Deputy District Attorney David Greenwald told the court that the video had also included a statement by Beaver that all he needed was “one juror” — presumably a reference to avoiding a unanimous guilty verdict. That statement was redacted from the video played for jurors.

The state rested its case Tuesday afternoon after presenting a parade of civilian, law enforcement and expert witnesses who testified about their involvement with the case.

photo by: Contributed

Vincent Lee Walker

One eyewitness testified that he was outside the library and saw Walker in the middle of Vermont Street “having a breakdown” and saying something about his kids having been taken away and other “gibberish.” Then Walker went to the sidewalk on the east side of Vermont and “got in a dude’s face.” That man then pulled a gun out of his pants and shot Walker three times before hopping on a black Mongoose bike and riding off “like nothing happened.”

When asked if he had heard Walker say something threatening to the shooter or pull out a knife or any type of weapon, the witness said no.

Tahirkheli has attempted to make much of an item found with Walker that law enforcement witnesses variously described as a butter knife or a utensil for frosting cakes or working with paint. He asked one police officer, Detective George Baker, if the tool could be used as a weapon, and Baker answered that it was “not a knife knife” because it had a rounded end and no sharp edges.

He didn’t believe it could do any damage, but Tahirkheli followed up with “Anything could be a weapon?” and Baker said yes.

Other witnesses described what the shooter had been wearing: a red jacket, white ball cap and white and black Nike Jordan shoes.

Police testified that they found items matching those descriptions, which had been discarded in various ways in an area extending from the library to Ninth and Iowa streets. They found the hat on Vermont Street, the jacket in a trash can on Ohio Street and the shoes — along with a baggie of bullets — in a trash can in the bathroom of an Iowa Street restaurant.

They also found a black Mongoose bicycle padlocked to a utility pole at Seventh and Tennessee streets, and a police dog located a handgun hidden in some brush on Ohio Street.

One KBI expert testified that shell casings at the scene of the shooting and three bullets retrieved from Walker’s body all came from the gun that the dog found. Another KBI expert testified that DNA from the hat, gun and handlebars of the Mongoose bike all was consistent with Beaver’s DNA.

On the first day of the trial, Tahirkheli told jurors that they needed to block out such evidence as mere “noise” since there was no question that Beaver had shot Walker. DNA was “not the question,” he said, portraying the incident as a “simple case” of “drugs, homelessness and anger.”

Walker and Beaver had both been among Lawrence’s homeless community.

When a forensic pathologist, Altaf Hossain, took the stand Tuesday and said that a toxicology report had indicated methamphetamine in Walker’s system, Tahirkheli quizzed Hossain about how meth could affect a person. Hossain said that, depending on the circumstances, the effect could range from nothing to aggression to death.

“Anything can happen,” he said.

In his opening statement, Tahirkheli had told the jury that Walker had been angry and suggested that he had acted in a threatening and aggressive manner toward Beaver, leading to a justifiable shooting.

Assistant DA Devin Canfield had suggested that Walker had spit in Beaver’s face, prompting not a justifiable shooting by Beaver but a fatal overreaction. For that, “Mr. Walker lost his life.”

On Tuesday, a witness testified that he encountered Beaver at an auto parts store on Sixth Street, where Beaver, shoeless, told him “a guy spit in my face and I shot him,” which the man at first dismissed as a made-up “homeless story.”

Beaver opened a backpack, showed the man his Nike Jordans and asked him if he had some spare shoes he could have, the man testified. He did not give him shoes, but he gave him a distinctive lighter with a pineapple on it, which police said they later found on Beaver.

Jurors will hear the defense’s case, if it decides to introduce any evidence, on Wednesday morning.

Beaver is currently in custody at the Douglas County Jail on a $1 million bond.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Nicholas Beaver is pictured with defense attorney Angela Trimble at his murder trial Tuesday, July 22, 2025, in Douglas County District Court.