In the late summer of 2021, the life of James Epps Jr., a 37-year-old man, was cut short by a burst of violence in Topeka, Kansas. A friend, Fred Morrisette, was shocked to see the news on Facebook, having just spoken with Epps. While acknowledging his friend had a past, Morrisette asked people to not judge a book by its cover, saying, “Judge James by what he was doing now.”
On the afternoon of Tuesday, August 24, 2021, just before 2 p.m., police were called to the Travelers Inn on Southwest Topeka Boulevard with reports of a shooting. Inside Room 232, they discovered Epps with a gunshot wound to his head. Despite the efforts of American Medical Response personnel, he was pronounced deceased at the scene only 15 minutes after the initial call. An affidavit later stated the shooting stemmed from an altercation over drugs and money, with investigators describing it as a drug deal gone wrong.
The investigation moved quickly.
Police questioned several people at the motel, and witnesses provided descriptions of two individuals who had fled on foot. An officer in the area soon located 19-year-old Isaiah Krainbill and a woman named Alexis Brock just east of the motel. Krainbill refused to speak to police without an attorney.
Investigators interviewed Brock, who changed her story several times. She first suggested the conflict was over a dice game but later said it may have been about drugs and money. According to the affidavit, Brock eventually told police that after the shooting, Krainbill handed her the gun and told her to put it in his backpack, which he then threw over a fence. Police deployed a K9 unit and found the backpack with the gun inside in a fenced-in area nearby. Other witnesses from the room told police Krainbill had burst in with a gun, confronted Epps, and threatened to shoot him just before firing the weapon.
Isaiah Krainbill was arrested and booked into the Shawnee County Jail hours after the shooting. He was formally charged with first-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon by a felon, and his bond was set at $1 million.
The case concluded over a year later. In December 2022, Krainbill pleaded guilty to the amended charges of second-degree murder and attempted aggravated robbery. In March 2023, he was sentenced to 222 months in prison, more than 18 years, for the death of James Epps Jr.
