Charles Darnell Thomas II at a jury trial on Aug. 4, 2022, at the Judicial and law Enforcement Center, 111 E. 11th Street.

A Lawrence man who was convicted of trying to kill his pregnant girlfriend and one of his friends was sentenced in Douglas County District Court on Tuesday to more than 13 years in prison for that incident and several other crimes.

Charles Darnell Thomas, 38, was found guilty in August of two counts of attempted second-degree murder, one count of misdemeanor battery, one felony count of aggravated battery and three counts of aggravated endangerment of a child for a shooting incident that took place on July 8, 2020. On Tuesday, he was sentenced for those crimes, and he also pleaded no contest and was sentenced for DUI and two counts of battery on a law enforcement officer in an unrelated incident.

In total, Judge Stacey Donovan sentenced Thomas to 13 years and one month. A little more than seven years of that sentence is for the attempted murder counts, and the rest is for the various other crimes. She also credited Thomas with a little over two years of time served.

Donovan said she saw no reason to depart from state sentencing guidelines, despite defense attorney Branden Smith’s argument that the victims in the attempted murder case did not want Thomas to go to prison. Smith said that Thomas’ family would be a strong support network, a characterization that Senior Assistant District Attorney David Greenwald disputed.

“The defense says he has a support system, but judge, there isn’t anybody here,” Greenwald said as he gestured around the courtroom, which was nearly empty except for law enforcement and court employees.

In the incident from July 2020, Thomas was accused of beating his pregnant girlfriend with a gun in the trailer they shared and then firing the gun at the woman, a friend, and two children. Nobody was wounded by gunfire in that incident, but jurors at the trial in August heard witnesses say there was blood all over the floor from where Thomas had beaten the woman with the gun, and the jury saw photos of the woman from that day with a gash in her temple and bruising around her eye.

Thomas testified in August that he had been smoking K2, a type of synthetic marijuana, on the day the incident occurred. He said that he thought the K2 was laced with PCP and that he wasn’t himself the day in question.

The other case for which Thomas was sentenced dates back to 2019. Greenwald said Tuesday that on March 3, 2019, Thomas was accused of crashing a car into a charity donation box, fleeing from an officer on foot, and then wrestling the officer on the ground. Greenwald said the officer’s head struck a curb during the struggle, and that Thomas got on top of the officer and struck him before running away. Another officer caught up with Thomas and arrested him but suffered a cut to his leg while doing so, Greenwald said.

Greenwald said Thomas told an officer after he was arrested that he had been smoking synthetic marijuana on the day of the incident.

The plea deal that Thomas took on Tuesday in that case also drops two other charges from unrelated incidents: violation of protection orders and violation of the Violent Offenders Registration Act. Additional details on those cases weren’t immediately available on Tuesday.

After Tuesday’s hearing, Thomas was returned to the Douglas County Jail, where he has been since his arrest in 2020.