Teen accused of killing another Valley teen appears in court Tuesday

PALMER — The teen accused of shooting and killing another teen inside a parked vehicle appeared in Palmer Superior Court for a bail hearing Tuesday afternoon.

According to court documents, Jordan Flowers, 19, shot and killed Gunnar Swan, also 19, early on the morning of Jan. 27.

The state prosecutors asked judge Kari Kristiansen to increase Flowers’ bail from $100,000 to $500,000 and add a condition to prevent him from being in contact with firearms.

Public Defender Hatton Greer argued that the defense had not been given enough notice of the increase in bail, and that Flowers should be out already.

“He’s made bail. He should be released. I don’t know why he has not been released,” Greer said.

Prosecutors added charges of murder in the first and second degree to go along with manslaughter and the three counts of assault that Flowers was charged with previously. Greer repeatedly made mention to witnesses sitting in the gallery, asking if Kristiansen wanted to proceed. Kristiansen allowed the bail hearing to proceed, but did not issue an increase in bail.

“The state is concerned on several levels. One, that prior history of guns and threatening people with guns. Two, there’s not, to my knowledge, search conditions that allows PED to search the residence for firearms. I think that’s necessary considering the defendant’s history and three, this bail amount is really too low for the level of offense and the history of firearms that the defendant currently has. He’s threatened to kill one person previously and he succeeded in killing one person this time around. The state’s request is going to be at least $500,000 cash corporate and PED monitoring with a search condition for firearms in the residence and any vehicles the defendant is driving in and his person,” prosecutors said.

Greer said that he had no problem with the condition for firearms, but argued that the bail should not be increased when he had such short notice.

“There should be at least, if the defense has an objection, I think that they’re entitled to a short amount of time just so they can prepare for that hearing. This was filed today at 10:52 this morning,” Kristiansen said. “I’m not going to address bail amount today. I think that the notice is not adequate for the defense to respond to.”

Flowers posted bail on Monday and has another bail hearing on Wednesday at 1:30 p.m.

Contact Frontiersman reporters Tim Rockey at tim.rockey@frontiersman.com.