photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Lawrence police conduct interviews after a shooting at The Jayhawk Cafe, 1340 Ohio St., on Saturday, Jan. 17, 2026.

A defendant in the Jan. 17 fatal shooting at the Jayhawk Cafe is claiming that he should be immune from prosecution because he was acting in self-defense when he heard “multiple gunshots in close proximity to him.”

Hearing those gunshots entitled 18-year-old Daitron Daniels Strickland to pull his own handgun out and start shooting without aiming it at anyone, his attorney, Razmi Tahirkheli, has written in a motion filed in Douglas County District Court.

Daniels Strickland, of Shawnee, is charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of Aiden Sullivan Knowles, 18, and one count of attempted second-degree murder in the shooting of Brady Clark, 16. He also faces an attempted second-degree murder charge for allegedly firing a handgun at Maddox Myer, whose age was not listed in the charging document.

In his motion for immunity, Tahirkheli, citing arrest affidavits in the case, claims that the shootout began when 18-year-old Caiden Clem — also a murder defendant in the case — fired multiple rounds as he left the bar at 1340 Ohio St., commonly known as The Hawk.

Clem, of Atchison, had been in the same group as Daniels Strickland at the bar, and the teens had been “interacting normally,” Tahirkheli said in the motion. But around 1:45 a.m. the group was approached by Hawk staff and asked to leave. An altercation then developed between members of the group and the staff “over the return of a cellphone.” The altercation became physical when some individuals began to fight staff, but most people were eventually forced out of the bar.

Tahirkheli claims that at this point Daniels Strickland was outside walking north from the bar when Clem “pulled up his hoodie, walked towards Ohio Street, and fired three to five rounds.”

The gunshots so nearby “scared” Daniels Strickland, who believed someone was shooting at him, Tahirkheli said, and he “returned fire pointing his gun at the half-cement wall next to The Hawk’s front door.” In doing so, he “did not aim at anyone.”

“Defendant did not see where the initial gunshots came from, and he did not see anyone directly in front of him when he fired,” Tahirkheli said.

Pulling his gun out and firing “was a natural reaction to defend himself,” Tahirkheli said, adding that he attempted to “minimize harm” by shooting at the half wall. “He attempted to direct his fire away from individuals and toward an inanimate object even though he was scared for his life.” The action, Tahirkheli said, was “to show his perceived assailant that he was armed and able to protect himself.”

Under Kansas law, a person is justified in the use of deadly force if he reasonably believes such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or to a third person. Judge Amy Hanley will evaluate Daniels Strickland’s immunity claim at a hearing on Feb. 10.

photo by: Kansas Department of Corrections

Caiden Carl Ralph Clem

Clem has been charged with murder in the first degree (during the commission of the felony of aggravated assault) and two counts of aggravated assault. The murder charge relates to Knowles. The aggravated assault charges relate to using a handgun to place two people, Cole Morris and Jake Spencer, in reasonable apprehension of immediate bodily harm. Spencer is listed in charging documents as having been born in 2009. No year is given for Morris.

Tahirkheli argues that, unlike Clem, Daniels Strickland was not committing a felony at the time of Knowles’ death and would not therefore be barred from claiming immunity from prosecution.

Clem’s attorney, Carl Cornwell, has said that Clem would not be requesting immunity.

Daniels Strickland and Clem are both being held in the Douglas County Jail on bonds of $1 million cash or surety. The arrest affidavits cited by Tahirkheli in his motion for immunity have not been publicly released, so most details and allegations supporting the arrests are as yet unclear.

Tahirkheli has asked the court to keep Daniels Strickland’s arrest affidavit under seal, saying its release would taint the jury pool and interfere with his client’s right to a fair trial, in addition to providing “an opportunity to other inmates to use the information against the Defendant and for their benefit.”

The Douglas County District Attorney’s Office, however, is not objecting to release of the affidavit provided that certain information such as names and ages be redacted to protect individuals’ privacy.

Senior Assistant District Attorney Ricardo Leal said at an earlier court appearance that Clem, although only 18, had a high criminal history score already, with one person felony on his record and three person misdemeanors. He said 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 in November.

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.

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.”

The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office has not released a booking photo of Daniels Strickland or of Clem, though Clem has a publicly available mugshot on file with the state prison system due to his incarceration.