Wichita man headed to prison for fatal shooting at south-side trailer home in 2018
A 35-year-old Wichita man is headed to prison for killing his new girlfriend’s boyfriend at a south-side trailer home in 2018.
Sedgwick County District Judge Kevin Mark Smith on Friday sentenced DeWayne A. Cope to 5 years, 3 months in the April 15, 2018, fatal shooting of 39-year-old Trenton H. Custer of Wichita, said Dan Dillon, a spokesman for the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office. A neighbor who crawled through a window of the trailer, in the 3800 block of South Meridian, found Custer’s body facedown on the floor with gunshot wounds to his back and chest, according to an account previously given by Wichita police and court records.
Witnesses told police that Custer, Cope and the girlfriend all lived at the trailer home and that Cope shot Custer twice to protect the girlfriend after Custer quarreled with her over other roommates not paying bills, a probable cause affidavit released in the case says. The affidavit says Custer dated and bought the trailer home with the girlfriend and that she moved Cope in after having an affair with him.
After the shooting, Cope and others “discussed disposing of Trenton’s body or burying it,” according to the affidavit. Cope and the girlfriend spent about two weeks staying with friends and in different hotels — and even went to Oklahoma “to try to find a place to hide,” the affidavit says — before his arrest.
Cope was convicted by plea on Feb. 1 of one count of voluntary manslaughter in connection with Custer’s shooting and to one count of methamphetamine possession in an unrelated case, court records show. He was originally charged with first-degree premeditated murder in Custer’s death.
Prosecutors initially charged Cope in 2018, shortly after his arrest. But they were forced to dismiss the murder case in January 2019 after a key witness called to testify at Cope’s preliminary hearing couldn’t be found, court records show.
The murder charge was refiled more than two years later, in July 2021.
