photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

The Conoco gas station at 23rd and Louisiana, pictured Aug. 19, 2026, was the site of an alleged aggravated assault that is the subject matter of a Douglas County trial.

A witness told a Douglas County jury that his simple failure to return a stranger’s nod at a gas station led to the stranger angrily pulling a gun on him, but a defense attorney told jurors that the armed man was clearly acting in self-defense and that it was the unarmed man who should be on trial.

Jurors will soon decide which version of events they believe in the case of 50-year-old defendant Jason Keesee, who is standing trial on two counts of aggravated assault with a handgun.

The incident, which jurors saw video recordings of on Wednesday — including Keesee pulling a handgun out of his leather jacket, racking it and brandishing it — happened just before 11:30 a.m. on Nov. 10, 2025. The surveillance videos from the gas station did not contain sound, so it wasn’t clear what was being shouted in apparent anger.

The alleged victim, William Renfro, told jurors that he and his fiancée, Tasha Ashford, the other alleged victim, had stopped at the Conoco gas station at 23rd and Louisiana streets to get gas and cigarettes. Their 3-year-old daughter was in the backseat of their SUV. Renfro said that as he was walking inside the Conoco he encountered a stranger, Keesee, who was leaving. Keesee claimed to have nodded his head at him, Renfro testified, and was apparently upset that the nod had not been returned and told Renfro so.

Renfro, taken aback, said he replied that he did nod, though he also testified that he was “minding my own business” and wasn’t really paying attention to who did what. What happened next, though, definitely caught his attention, he said.

“He was yelling and cussing me,” Renfro said, and saying, “I got guns! I got guns!”

Renfro said he was attempting to apologize for the perceived slight but was also angry and frustrated that the encounter had rapidly escalated to a gun threat.

Renfro said Keesee unzipped his jacket, “reached in and pointed a gun at me.”

In the video seen by jurors, Keesee is seen setting down two objects that he was carrying, unzipping his jacket, pulling out a handgun, racking it and brandishing it in front of him for a few seconds before walking off. Renfro, who said he was not armed, cannot be seen in the video, but a man who was working at the store can be.

That man told jurors that he had gone outside when he heard loud arguing and had attempted to de-escalate the dispute, though he did not know what it had concerned. In a video from a different angle he is seen trying to hold Renfro back from walking in Keesee’s direction. He said he focused on Renfro because Renfro was closer to him than Keesee was. Renfro’s fiancée also is seen pulling, unsuccessfully, at Renfro’s shoulder — afraid, she later told the jury, that he could get shot.

Renfro testified that he was advancing to apologize and to ask Keesee why he was threatening gun violence “over a head nod.”

The store worker testified that he quickly retreated back inside after Keesee suddenly pulled the gun.

“As soon as I saw the gun, I panicked and rushed back to my safety,” he said.

Renfro said he “just kind of froze for a minute, like is this really happening?”

He said that Keesee said, “I’ll effin’ shoot you!”

Renfro then walked back inside the store and told someone to call the police.

He testified that he was nervous and scared at the sight of the gun.

“You never know what’s going to happen,” he said.

The fiancée, Ashford, said that Renfro had been shot before, and she testified that she was right behind Renfro when the gun was pulled.

“I ran back to the car,” she said. “I was scared — afraid that I’d get shot and my kids wouldn’t have me.”

Two Lawrence police officers also took the stand Wednesday. One of them, Caleb Nesmith, testified that officers located Keesee at a grocery store down the street. They cleared the store before arresting him. Nesmith said Keesee was not wearing the jacket seen in the video and had a weapon on him, but not the weapon he had pulled at the Conoco — a statement to which defense attorney Razmi Tahirkheli loudly objected and that Judge Stacey Donovan sustained.

Tahirkheli questioned Nesmith at some length on when he believed it was justified to pull a gun on someone, apparently trying to liken a police officer’s legal use of force to what his client had done in the video. Nesmith said the decision to draw his gun would depend on the context but generally stated that he would resort to his weapon only if he feared for his own life or that of another person.

During jury selection Wednesday morning, Tahirkheli had asked jurors numerous questions about their opinions on Kansas’ “stand your ground” law, including giving them a hypothetical about a road rage incident between two men where one of them displays a gun.

Tahirkheli attempted to discredit Renfro by implying that he had consumed alcohol on that day, which Renfro denied, and suggested that he was wearing only a T-shirt in the video rather than a winter jacket because he had been drinking.

In his opening statement to the jury, Tahirkheli also argued that Keesee did not point the gun directly at a person and that the gun was a warning more than a threat. He described his client as an “emaciated” person who would have been too fragile to engage in a physical altercation and therefore relied on a gun for self-protection.

“All he was doing was defending himself,” Tahirkheli said.

He even went so far as to claim that the state “got the wrong person.” It was Renfro, he said, who should be standing trial for aggravated assault, not his client.

In his own opening, prosecutor Cody Smith told the jury that given the “very minor” dispute at the heart of the case, self-defense didn’t enter the picture at all.

Renfro, he said, never threatened Keesee, wasn’t armed and did not do anything “to warrant having a gun being pulled on him.”

Keesee had options short of brandishing a deadly weapon, Smith said, including: “He could have talked to him.”

The state rested its case Wednesday afternoon, and the trial will resume Thursday morning. It was unclear if the defense would put on any evidence, including whether Keesee would take the stand.

Court records indicate that Judge Donovan, having reason to believe Keesee was incompetent to stand trial, twice ordered competency exams for him — once in December, a month after the incident, and once in April of this year.

A person is generally regarded as competent to stand trial if he understands the charges against him and can assist in his defense.

Wednesday’s trial was the first to take place in the new Douglas County courtrooms and was marked by numerous delays as attorneys and court personnel dealt with new equipment and/or technology issues.