Wichita man found guilty of stabbing twins, one fatally, in fight over parking space
A Wichita father charged with fatally stabbing an unarmed 22-year-old woman and injuring her twin sister during a fight over a parking spot at their south-side apartment complex more than six years ago has been found guilty at trial of second-degree reckless murder and aggravated battery, according to Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office spokesman John Waller.
A Sedgwick County jury handed down the convictions Friday against 44-year-old Seth R. Collins in the April 30, 2016, stabbings of twins Shayla and Kayla Brown, Waller said. He is scheduled for sentencing on Oct. 14.
The verdict caps a series of district and appellate court rulings that first threw out then later reinstated Collins’ charges after he claimed immunity under the state’s Stand Your Ground law.
Collins stabbed the women following a confrontation over a parking space at Falcon Pointe Apartments, 4244 S. Hydraulic in Wichita. Authorities have said Collins tried to pull in a parking space after taking his daughters out for ice cream but couldn’t do it safely because Shayla Brown was standing there, talking to a friend in a car in an adjacent stall.
Court records say Collins “got into a verbal argument” with the women “that included an exchange of racial and other insults” after he “made negative comments and drove away.”
He ultimately parked in another space but got into a fistfight with the women as he and his daughters walked to their building, the records say.
The fight turned fatal when Collins, about 10 minutes after retreating to his apartment, discovered he had lost his eyeglasses in the fight and went back outside to retrieve them.
He stabbed the twins during a quarrel on a second-floor stairway landing after the women and their mother followed him back into the building. According to court records, Shayla Brown pulled on Collins’ shirt after he pulled a pocket knife with a nearly 4-inch blade, causing all four to fall down the stairs.
Shayla Brown was stabbed in the arm. Her sister, Kayla, received a fatal knife wound to her neck.
After prosecutors filed charges in 2016, Collins claimed immunity under a Kansas law that allows a person who is attacked to use deadly force to protect themselves from death or great bodily harm. A Sedgwick County District Court judge sided with Collins and threw out the case in May of 2017.
But the Kansas Court of Appeals overturned the ruling the next year, saying Collins might have been “looking for a fight” and “a chance to pull out the knife” when he went back outside after the first confrontation. A jury, not a judge, should decide whether deadly force was justified, the ruling says.
The Kansas Supreme Court affirmed the appellate court decision remanding the case in 2020.
