WATERLOO - Police didn't question people found in a home with drugs, a gun and ammo hours after finding a car matching the description of a vehicle that fled a shooting, jurors heard Monday as the defense started its case in the trial of Jeffrey Duane Smith.

Smith, 21, of Waterloo, is accused of shooting 27-year-old Tonyeah Jackson at Club Crystyles July 9, 2006.

Police said Smith had been dating Jackson's cousin, and Jackson allegedly hit Smith earlier that day following an argument between Smith and his girlfriend.

Prosecutors said Smith armed himself with a 9mm handgun with a laser sight and tracked down Jackson at the club, shooting him in retaliation.

Defense attorney Robert Montgomery said his client wasn't involved in the shooting.

Montgomery told jurors police ignored other suspects including members of a street gang, Southside, who were found at a home on Woodmayr Drive on the night of the slaying.

Immediately after the shooting, patrol officers were on the lookout for an Oldsmobile Aurora a witness reported seeing leaving the area. And police located an Aurora parked at 1680 Woodmayr Drive with a warm hood and muffler.

Inside the home, police found crack cocaine in a box with wrestling action figures, a Sterling .22-caliber pistol in a bedroom, three rounds of 9mm ammo and so much marijuana that it clogged the toilet when a resident tried to flush it.

Lead investigator Jeff Tyler said officers got a search warrant for the Aurora, and the Woodmayr matter was turned over to agents with the Tri-County Drug Enforcement Task Force after Smith wasn't found at the house.

He said people found at the home weren't interrogated about the nightclub shooting, and no one has been arrested in connection with the narcotics found at the house.

Tyler said investigators had information from witnesses to the shooting that "J-Rich" was the gunman who killed Jackson. J-Rich is Smith's nickname.

"Did you go there looking for Jeff Smith, or did you go there looking for whom shot Tonyeah Jackson?" Montgomery asked.

"I went there looking for Jeff Smith," Tyler said.

A defense witness, Darnell Wilder, who worked at Club Crystyles said the club was a hangout for the local street gang known as L-Block and had heard Jackson declare his membership with the gang.

Jurors also heard from a police officer that L-Block and Southside were rival gangs, and a Waterloo woman testified she was in a relationship with one of the Southside members at the Woodmayr home and was having an affair with Jackson on the side.

Phone records show she called Jackson shortly before he was shot, but under cross examination by prosecutors, she said her boyfriend wasn't aware of the affair and she had never seen him with a gun.

Under the state's theory, Smith fled the club in his Monte Carlo, which was later found abandoned down the street from the establishment. The Aurora, the state maintains, was a mix up and misidentified as a possible suspect vehicle.

In earlier testimony, four patrons identified Smith as the gunman.

But Wilder, the nightclub employee, told jurors he couldn't identify the shooter. He said the assailant wore a hat that was pulled down as if to hide his face.

Wilder also guessed the shooter was taller than Smith and about 185 to 200 pounds, which is heavier than Smith was at the time.

Under cross examination, Wilder said he only glanced at the shooter for about three to five seconds as he poured a beer before the shooting started.