photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Defendant Daitron Daniels Strickland, from left, attorney Carl Cornwell, standing, attorney Razmi Tahirkheli, and defendant Caiden Clem appear Monday, April 13, 2026, in Douglas County District Court.

Updated at 11:15 a.m. Monday, April 13

The families of two men who were shot in January at The Hawk, one fatally, expressed disbelief Monday when they got word, last minute, that another continuance was granted for the defense.

“Are you (expletive) kidding me?” one relative said as prosecutor Eve Kemple returned from the judge’s chambers with the news.

“This is ridiculous,” another said through tears as family members passed tissues and comforted one another.

The continuance was at least the second requested by the defense in a shooting that occurred three months ago. Judge Amy Hanley, when she took the bench Monday, also expressed frustration at the delay, but said she had no choice under the circumstances.

Defense attorney Razmi Tahirkheli made the motion Monday morning, after the parties had assembled in the courtroom. He said the hearing couldn’t go on because a necessary witness, Lawrence Police Detective M.T. Brown, was out of the country and hadn’t been served with a subpoena to appear, though the defense said one had been provided to the sheriff’s office to be delivered. Tahirkheli said he had received no notice that the subpoena had not been served and that he had been ready to proceed with the case Monday, as other witnesses waited in the hall to testify.

Tahirkheli’s client, Daitron Daniels Strickland, 18, of Shawnee, faces one count of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted first-degree murder, criminal possession of a firearm by a felon and misdemeanor battery, while Caiden Clem, 18, of Atchison, faces four counts of aggravated assault and one count of criminal possession of a weapon by a felon.

Aidan Knowles, 18, was killed in the Jan. 17 shooting at the popular college bar on Ohio Street, and Brady Clark, 16 at the time but now 17, was critically wounded. Clark, who testified at an earlier hearing about being shot, was also present in court Monday.

Monday’s hearing was supposed to have been the second half of an immunity-from-prosecution hearing pursuant to a motion filed by Tahirkheli for Daniels Strickland, who is claiming that he had been acting in self-defense that night when he shot Knowles and Clark and, hence, should not be prosecuted. Clem was also set to be arraigned on Monday, but that proceeding, like Daniels Strickland’s, will now occur on June 11.

An earlier continuance of the preliminary hearing was granted for the defense in February because Tahirkheli was needed for a trial in Crawford-Girard County and because reviewing security video evidence in the Lawrence case would require many hours, Tahirkheli had said in a motion to the court.

On Monday, Tahirkheli said that Detective Brown was necessary to establish a timeline in the video evidence from The Hawk.

“Without him we cannot proceed,” Tahirkheli said.

Hanley, while expressing frustration, said she had to grant the continuance for “good cause” shown. Brown was not at the previous hearing, is currently out of the country and apparently had not been made aware of the court date. To prevent a repeat delay, Hanley ordered Tahirkheli to issue another subpoena by Friday and to personally contact Brown about his expected appearance in June.

“I’m not resetting it again,” Hanley said.

Clem’s attorney, Carl Cornwell, asked Hanley to lower Clem’s $1 million bond since he was no longer facing the felony murder count he had originally been charged with. Cornwell asked that the bond be lowered to $25,000 with house arrest, which the state opposed.

Kemple cited Clem’s high criminal history score, a “B” on a scale where “I” is the lowest and “A” is the highest. She noted that Clem was on parole at the time of The Hawk incident and that the crimes he’s accused of involved a firearm. She said if his bond were to be lowered, it should be no lower than $500,000.

Hanley denied the bond modification for now, telling Cornwell she wanted a written motion from him with a “very detailed plan” about where Clem would live and other personal circumstances.

Strickland Daniels is also being held on a $1 million bond.

Clem was on post-release supervision at the time of The Hawk shooting, as he had just been released from Kansas Department of Corrections custody two months prior.

According to KDOC records, he was convicted in Atchison County of burglary in 2023, an incident that involved the theft of a firearm, and was also convicted of tampering with electronic monitoring equipment. Those records list the case status as “active,” meaning he is still on supervision. Cornwell on Monday mentioned Clem’s KDOC hold.

KDOC records also indicate that while serving time at El Dorado Correctional Facility in June of 2025 Clem had a disciplinary report for “incitement to riot.”

Continuances in criminal cases and sometimes monthslong delays between hearings are not uncommon as busy courts juggle crowded calendars. It has not been unusual in Douglas County for a murder case to take two to three years to reach a conclusion.