A 34-year-old western Kansas man was arrested Thursday in his hometown in connection to the Monday killing in west Wichita, police spokesperson Juan Rebolledo said Friday.

Micky Don Owens of Johnson City had an “ongoing dispute” with 44-year-old Wichita man Shawn Lahman, who was found fatally shot in the driver’s seat of a rental passenger van, Rebolledo said.

Rebolledo didn’t know if Owens had come to Wichita just because of the dispute or if the rental was Lahman’s.

Police responding to a call around 11:20 p.m. in the 1300 block of South Edwards, which is near Meridian and Harry, found Lahman fatally shot in the upper torso.

“The investigation revealed that Owens drove to Wichita on Monday, saw Lahman on South Edwards, and shot him,” Rebolledo said in a news release. “Investigators quickly learned that Owen’s fled to Stanton County Kansas and coordinated with Stanton County Sheriff’s Office and the Kansas Highway Patrol to be on the lookout for him.”

The sheriff’s office arrested Owens in Johnson City on Thursday in connection with an unrelated Sedgwick County case that involves drugs and traffic violations, according to Rebolledo and court documents.

He’s now been arrested on suspicion of first-degree murder in the death of Lahman.

Owens had a first appearance in the unrelated Sedgwick County case on Friday, court records say.

Owens has a dozen convictions from incidents between 2008 and 2018, Kansas Department of Corrections records show. Four of those are in Sedgwick County. Other convictions are in Grant, Finney and Stanton counties. The convictions involve aggravated battery, aggravated burglary, arson, three theft charges and two fleeing-and-eluding-an-officer charges.

Owens was last released from a Kansas prison in April 2019.

Owens is currently serving an out-of-state probation in Kansas, a KDOC official said.

Lahman’s death was the city’s seventh homicide this year. There were 16 at this time last year.