On the night before Thanksgiving 2019, a dispute between neighbors at the Spanish Trace Apartments on Harrodsburg Road in Lexington, Kentucky, ended with the death of 37-year-old Robert Cole Smith. Police found Smith with a gunshot wound on November 27 and he was taken to hospital, where he later died.

Investigators say a commotion in the third-floor attic of the building preceded the confrontation. Neighbors lived in the same building as the accused shooter. A 58-year-old neighbor, Terrence F. Fister, was arrested at the scene and charged with Smith’s murder. According to a witness statement from Fister’s son, Smith was seen crawling backward up a stairwell pleading not to be shot, then a shot was heard and the son saw his father holding a handgun. After being shot Smith reportedly asked the son why his father had shot him, and he told officers the shooter was in Fister’s apartment.

What did readers in that complex remember about tensions or arguments in the weeks before that Thanksgiving night?