By Mack Callahan | This Is Topeka
There are bad decisions.
There are really bad decisions.
And then there’s allegedly pulling your car sideways in a neighborhood, getting out, and opening fire in the middle of the afternoon.
According to the Shawnee County Sheriff’s Office, 37-year-old Allen J. Askew of Berryton was arrested following a shooting reported around 4:19 p.m. on March 25 near SW Greenview Drive and SW Westview Road in the Montara subdivision.
Deputies say Askew pulled across the roadway, exited his vehicle, and began firing a weapon.
Let’s pause there.
Not a back alley.
Not 2 a.m.
Not some isolated stretch of county road.
A subdivision. In daylight.
The charges read like someone checked every box available:
- Aggravated assault with a deadly weapon
- Aggravated assault of a law enforcement officer
- Criminal discharge of a firearm into an occupied vehicle causing great bodily harm
- Aggravated battery with a weapon
- Possession of a firearm while under the influence
- DUI
- And, almost as an afterthought—parking in a prohibited area
That last one feels like the universe trying to sneak in a little sarcasm.
Now let’s talk bond.
$500,000.
Not once.
Repeated across the charges.
That’s the system’s way of saying: we’re taking this seriously.
Because when you combine firearms, alleged impairment, and a residential neighborhood, you’re not talking about a close call—you’re talking about the kind of situation that could have gone very differently.
There’s a pattern that shows up in cases like this, and it’s not subtle.
Escalation.
Vehicle.
Stop.
Exit.
Fire.
Each step is a decision. Each one moves further past the point where things could have been avoided.
And by the time you reach that last step, you’re no longer in the realm of mistakes—you’re in the realm of consequences.
As of now, Askew remains in custody with a court date set for June 11.
And for a neighborhood in Shawnee County, what should have been a normal Wednesday afternoon is now something else entirely—a reminder of how quickly things can shift when one person decides to turn a moment into something far more dangerous.
Because this wasn’t chaos.
It was a sequence.
And every step mattered.
