Xavier Patrick McCollough, a 28-year-old Black/African American man from Topeka, Kansas, died on July 23, 2016, after a shooting that ended with his vehicle crashing into a Topeka apartment building. First responders were sent to the scene early that Saturday after a report that a vehicle had struck the building. McCollough was found unresponsive inside the vehicle, where he was the only occupant. He was transported to a hospital but was pronounced dead.
Police quickly determined that the crash was connected to a shooting rather than being an ordinary traffic accident.
As investigators reconstructed what happened, the case developed into an alleged confrontation involving people McCollough knew. Police said McCollough and Shane Edward Sibert knew one another and had been involved in a dispute before the shooting. Prosecutors later presented a more detailed theory: McCollough had allegedly been lured to a parking lot where Sibert, Use David Laeli Jr. and Joseph G. Cooney were waiting. After the encounter and shooting, prosecutors said McCollough managed to drive away from the parking lot, but his vehicle subsequently crashed into the apartment building. The prosecution’s account therefore placed the gunfire before the crash and treated the wreck as part of McCollough’s attempt to leave the scene after he had been wounded.
The arrests came rapidly. Sibert was taken into custody on July 25 on suspicion of first-degree murder and criminal possession of a firearm by a felon. The following day, authorities announced the arrests of Laeli and Cooney in connection with McCollough’s death, with both initially facing first-degree murder allegations. By August, prosecutors had charged all three suspects with premeditated first-degree murder. Preliminary hearings were then scheduled to determine whether the evidence was sufficient to send the cases to trial.
By December 2016, the prosecution’s theory had evolved procedurally for Laeli and Cooney. A judge found sufficient evidence to order both to stand trial on felony first-degree murder charges. Laeli was also ordered to stand trial on an interference-with-law-enforcement charge. That allegation was particularly significant because prosecutors accused Laeli of directing someone to dispose of the pistol used in the shooting. The State maintained that McCollough had been drawn to the parking lot where the suspects were waiting and that he drove away after being shot, only to crash before he could obtain help.
Laeli eventually reached a plea agreement rather than proceeding to trial on the original murder charge. In October 2017, he pleaded guilty to the reduced charge of reckless involuntary manslaughter in connection with McCollough’s death. At the same proceeding he also admitted to possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute in an unrelated case. Contemporary reporting said he faced more than eleven years of imprisonment when sentencing was scheduled. The plea represented a substantial reduction from the first-degree murder accusation that had followed his arrest, while still establishing criminal responsibility for his role in the events that resulted in McCollough’s death.
The publicly accessible online reporting located for this synopsis does not clearly establish a final trial verdict, plea disposition or sentence for Sibert or Cooney in McCollough’s homicide case. What the available reporting does establish is that all three were arrested in the immediate aftermath, that prosecutors alleged McCollough was deliberately lured to a location where the suspects were waiting, that Laeli and Cooney were subsequently ordered to face felony-murder proceedings, and that Laeli later resolved his portion of the homicide prosecution by pleading guilty to reckless involuntary manslaughter.
