“I could tell he’d been crying, and he wanted me to hurry up and talk with him quickly, and he was talking very quickly,” Randy McCowan said. “He was shaking.”

Randy McCowan said he immediately called Singler’s cell phone, but was unable to reach him. He then drove his son past Singler’s apartment complex in Meridian Township, returning home to find police at his residence.

Connor McCowan told his father Singler punched him three times before he stabbed him, which contradicts MSU alumnus Tyler Aho’s testimony that Singler, his roommate at the time of his death, punched Connor McCowan once.

Randy McCowan testified that he did not report the information to police, a notion Ingham County Assistant Prosecutor John Dewane took issue with.

“You call the police when your son punches a wall, but you won’t call when he said he stabbed somebody?”

Randy McCowan said he did not report it because he was trying to make sense of what happened.

“I lost three kids in a second here,” he said. “I am in shock.”

The crime scene report also was brought into question as evidence. Photos from the crime scene investigation show a trail of blood on the walls and stairs of a stairwell in the apartment complex, which then continues into snow near a roadway outside the complex.

Michigan State Police Lt. Scott Hrcka, the crime scene investigation coordinator, said he was unable to recover fingerprints from Connor McCowan’s knife, which was found in a roadway three to four days after Singler was fatally stabbed.