Lawrence man pleads guilty in girlfriend s shooting death
May 14, 2021
FacebookTwitterEmail
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) A Lawrence man pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the shooting death of his girlfriend in January.
Johnathon L. West, 43, was originally charged with second-degree murder in the death of Jennifer Mosby, 41, but he agreed to a plea deal to a lesser charge on Thursday, The Lawrence Journal-World reported.
Mosby s family agreed to the plea deal, Chief Assistant District Attorney Eve Kemple said.
Kemple agreed with the prosecution’s recommendation of a little more than 18 years in prison. He will be sentenced June 16.
West told police he and Mosby and used marijuana laced with PCP while celebrating her birthday. He said he blacked out and regained consciousness after hearing a “pow” sound from a gun. He said he saw Mosby’s body but didn’t know if what he was seeing was real.
Dayson Gage Kelley, pictured in February 2020
A man who officers believed was readying a semi-automatic assault rifle around closing time in a popular Lawrence bar district was sentenced Thursday to 16 months in prison.
The judge told him that he or police officers could have lost their lives, and “that is something that none of us can stomach thinking about.”
Dayson G. Kelley, 19, of Topeka, was arrested in the early hours of Friday, Feb. 28, after Lawrence police officers Joshua Doncouse and Ian McCann saw him take a rifle out of the trunk of a vehicle in a parking lot near 14th and Ohio streets, the site of three popular college bars.