The gunman in a shooting that left a Lawrence man paralyzed will spend the next nine years in prison.
"This is one of the more disturbing cases this court has ever heard," Douglas County District Court Judge Jack Murphy said Monday as he sentenced John McGautha.
Last month a jury found the 19-year-old Lawrence man guilty of attempted second-degree murder and criminal possession of a firearm.
The victim, Allen Toshavik, now 19, Lawrence, was shot June 17, 2000, in a dispute that followed a night of drinking and drug use with McGautha and his brother, Ronnell McGautha, 18, also of Lawrence.
Toshavik, who attended the trial in a wheelchair and attached to a respirator, was not present for the sentencing. His mother, Claudia Simms, told Murphy her son was too upset to attend court.
"He looked at John as a friend," Simms said. "If, as a friend, he (McGautha) would do this to someone who was close to him, what would he do to a stranger?"
Douglas County Assistant Dist. Atty. Dave Zabel noted that Toshavik was chased down and shot in an eastern Lawrence neighborhood where other people could have been injured.
"Their goal was to kill him, and they almost succeeded," Zabel said of the McGautha brothers.
John McGautha, who had maintained his innocence throughout the trial, told Murphy in rambling comments before sentencing that he thought there were several issues his trial didn't address.
Noting that John McGautha showed no remorse for his crime, Murphy sentenced him to 8 1/2 years in prison for attempted second-degree murder and eight months in prison for possession of a firearm.
Ronnell McGautha faces charges of aiding and abetting attempted first-degree murder in the case. He has been held in Kansas City, Mo., and pleaded guilty to a drug trafficking charge during a hearing Monday in Jackson County, Mo., Circuit Court.
Ronnell McGautha will have to be extradited to Douglas County.
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