photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Lawrence Police Chief Rich Lockhart and another member of the LPD enter Lawrence City Hall on the morning of Jan. 5, 2026.

Story updated at 5:53 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 6:

Lawrence police have released the name of the 28-year-old Minnesota man who was fatally shot by a City of Lawrence employee on Monday at City Hall, and provided more information about the events that led up to the shooting.

The man’s name was Omar Dominguez Gavilan, and he was from Buffalo, Minnesota, Lawrence police spokeswoman Laura McCabe said in a news release on Tuesday. She said police believe that Gavilan was traveling through Kansas on a Greyhound bus before the break-in at City Hall and his fatal shooting.

McCabe said Gavilan was seen the evening before the shooting at the Kansas Turnpike Authority service station just east of Lawrence on I-70. There, the Highway Patrol was called to remove him from the station because he was acting erratically, she said, and the Highway Patrol took him to the Lawrence Amtrak station.

The next morning, McCabe said, Gavilan entered City Hall through a back door just before 8 a.m. She said he went up the stairs to the fourth floor and broke a window to enter an office area. On his way there, McCabe said, multiple employees saw him and notified authorities of an intruder before looking for a safe place to shelter.

Eventually, McCabe said, an on-duty court security officer “approached the man, announced his authority, and asked him to put his hands behind his back.” Lawrence Municipal Court was scheduled to be in session on Monday morning at City Hall, and the court uses security officers as part of its operations.

Gavilan did not comply with the officer’s request and instead began fighting the officer, McCabe said.

Police will not be releasing more details about the fight until their investigation of the incident is finished, McCabe said, “because detectives are still interviewing those involved and we don’t want to influence any witness accounts.” But she said the fight ended with shots being fired. Police have not said whether Gavilan was armed.

McCabe did not specify whether it was the court security officer who fired the shots. In a separate email on Monday night, McCabe had said that Lawrence police “for now” did not intend to release the specific title of the employee who shot the intruder, because there are few employees with that title and the person involved could therefore “be narrowed down easily.”

However, police have said that the employee was “authorized and trained to carry a firearm within the building.” As the Journal-World reported, while the city has a policy that lets employees carry concealed firearms in their individual capacity, there are only three types of city employees who can openly carry firearms as part of their job duties, and court security officers are one of them.

Seconds after shots were fired, McCabe said, police officers and another security officer were on scene and began providing aid to Gavilan until medical personnel arrived. Gavilan was pronounced dead at the scene.

McCabe said a full report on the incident was expected to be completed and sent to the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office for review within two to three weeks. During that time, the employee who shot Gavilan will remain on administrative leave.

As the Journal-World reported, City Hall is closed through Wednesday in response to the shooting, but it was open for Tuesday night’s Lawrence City Commission meeting. The commission met briefly in an executive session to discuss security measures at City Hall, but did not have any details to share publicly afterward; its agenda said that the discussion had to be kept private because “disclosure of such matters would jeopardize those security measures that are in place.”

However, Mayor Brad Finkeldei did read a statement before the main meeting about the aftermath of the shooting. He said he wanted to reassure the public that “City Hall is safe, and we continue to work closely with our professional staff to make sure our public buildings remain secure.” He thanked members of the public who had reached out to check on those who work at City Hall and express their concern.

“Tonight, we move forward with the business of the community,” Finkeldei said.