Two suspects are on the run in Kansas triple homicide involving drug charges and a toddler

Authorities in central Kansas were searching Thursday for two people accused in connection with a triple homicide.

Harvey County Sheriff T. Walton wrote in a posting on his department’s Facebook page that 35-year-old Jereme Lee Nelson and 31-year-old Myrta Rangel are charged in arrest warrants with capital murder and three counts of first-degree murder. Their bond has been set at $1 million each, and the sheriff believes they are in Oklahoma.

The bodies of 33-year-old Travis Street, 37-year-old girlfriend Angela Graevs and the couple’s Newton friend, 52-year-old Richard Prouty, were found Sunday outside a home in a rural area near Moundridge. The victims had been shot.

Walton has said a passing motorist reported the killings after she said she was waved down by another driver in a maroon car and told two bodies were outside the home. Deputies ultimately found the three bodies, as well as the slain couple’s unharmed, crying 18-month-old, inside the residence, Walton said. That toddler now is in the custody of relatives.

The maroon vehicle’s driver had a relationship with one of the victims, Walton said without elaborating. David Yoder, the county’s prosecuting attorney, has said the motive for the killings appears to be drug-related.

Asked Tuesday whether there could be an arrest and charges soon, Yoder said, “We’re hopeful.”

Court records show Street and Graevs were facing identical drug and aggravated child endangerment charges.

In April, Harvey County prosecutors filed eight separate charges against each of them. The charges say the alleged crimes occurred around June 17, 2015.

The charges: four counts of distribution or possession of methamphetamine, hydrocodone, oxycodone or hydromorphone; two counts of possession of drug paraphernalia, including a “digital scale and/or ledger”; one count of marijuana possession; and one count of aggravated child endangerment of a child born in 2015 and identified only by initials in the criminal complaint.

The endangerment charge says that Street and Graevs knowingly put the child in an environment where meth was being distributed or made.

In a June 2016 affidavit in which she was seeking a court-appointed attorney, Graevs said she had two sons – one 11, the other 1.

In the court document this past summer, she gave the Spring Lake Road address where deputies found her body Sunday evening. She said in the affidavit that she worked for a Moundridge trucking business.

She was facing arraignment on Nov. 16; Street was facing a preliminary hearing on Nov. 17.

Street was a registered drug offender with drug, theft and burglary convictions in Harvey and McPherson counties, records show.

His address in the drug offender registry is 8603 N. Spring Lake Road, in northwestern Harvey County. Street went on the registry in January 2013.

Walton said Monday that investigators think the victims may have been targeted and that the killings were not random.

The owner of the property told The Wichita Eagle on Monday that he had been in the process of evicting Street and Graevs. He said he had last been to the property on Oct. 16 and noticed video cameras inside and outside the house, monitors attached to the cameras and a police scanner.

This story was originally published November 3, 2016 at 10:49 AM with the headline "Two suspects are on the run in Kansas triple homicide involving drug charges and a toddler."