Jury selection begins for Johnson County trial in killing of Fairway police officer
Jury selection got underway Monday morning in Johnson County District Court for the trial of a 35-year-old Tennessee woman accused in the fatal shooting of Fairway police officer Jonah Oswald in the summer of 2023.
Andrea Rene Cothran of Goodlettsville, Tennessee, is facing a charge of first-degree felony murder in Oswald’s death.
She also faces charges of aggravated battery on a law enforcement officer, recklessly fleeing or attempting to elude a police officer, possession of a firearm by a felon, and three counts of theft, all felonies. She also faces a misdemeanor charge of reckless driving.
Under Kansas’ felony murder rule, accomplices are held culpable when someone is killed during the commission of a serious crime, even if they were not the killer.
Oswald, a 29-year-old husband and father of two young children, was fatally wounded Aug. 6, 2023, during an attempted arrest in a QuikTrip bathroom at 4700 Lamar Ave. in Mission as police were chasing two suspected automobile thieves. He died at the hospital the following day.
Cothran and Shannon Wayne Marshall, 40, of Ashland City, Tennessee, had allegedly traveled to the Kansas City area in a stolen crossover SUV, which was later found at a Walmart in Overland Park with Cothran’s ID and other documents allegedly inside.
A witness testified at a March 2024 preliminary hearing that on the morning Oswald was shot, he had driven his grandmother’s Jeep Grand Cherokee to the QuikTrip near 95th Street and Interstate 35 to pick up doughnuts.
When he returned, the Jeep was gone. He spotted it at the nearby Radisson Hotel parking lot. The witness identified the woman driving it as Cothran.
About that time, a Lenexa police officer showed up. During the hearing, testimony alleged that Cothran attempted to evade police, including ramming an officer’s car before she picked up Marshall and fled north on I-35, reaching speeds up to 120 mph, and weaving in and out of traffic.
The Jeep ended up crashing at the exit ramp at Lamar Avenue, a short distance from the QuikTrip in Mission.
An officer went to the convenience store to see if the pair had run inside, and she saw Cothran and Marshall heading for the bathrooms. The officer followed Cothran into the women’s restroom, where she arrested Cothran and took her into the hallway. She told other officers a second suspect was in the men’s bathroom.
Officers then entered the men’s restroom to make an arrest. Oswald was among them. Marshall shot Oswald in the head as officers tried to force open a stall door. Marshall was then shot by another responding officer and pronounced dead at the scene.
Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe determined in December 2023 that police acted lawfully in killing Marshall.
