photo by: Mugshot courtesy of the KBI Violent Offenders Registry

Katroy D. Jenkins is pictured with the Douglas County Judicial and Law Enforcement Center.

A Lawrence man pleaded guilty on Wednesday to robbing a gas station on New Year’s Eve and violating his previous probation for aggravated battery, and now he faces about six years in prison.

The man, Katroy Dejion Jenkins, 29, was originally charged in Douglas County District Court with one felony count of aggravated robbery with a handgun, but entered a guilty plea to robbery, which is a lesser felony. The charges relate to an incident around 1:30 a.m. on Dec. 31, 2022, at the Circle K gas station at 2330 Iowa St.

Chief Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Tatum said that as part of the plea agreement, Jenkins would not be allowed to request probation or a lesser sentence than was recommended on the Kansas sentencing grid. She said that he had a significant criminal history and that the state would be recommending the highest prison sentence on the grid.

Judge Amy Hanley said that, given the criminal history that the state believes Jenkins has, he now faced between 53 and 60 months.

Jenkins then agreed that by robbing the gas station he violated the probation he was serving for an aggravated robbery conviction from 2021. He was originally charged with attempted murder for that incident, in which he cut a 46-year-old woman with a sharp object on May 2, 2021, at Burcham Park, as the Journal-World reported. He pleaded no contest to aggravated battery with a deadly weapon as part of a plea agreement in June 2021, was ordered to register as a violent offender for 15 years and was granted 24 months of probation, according to court records.

Hanley said that Jenkins had an underlying sentence of 18 months in prison for that conviction and that Jenkins would have to serve that time consecutively with his sentence for the new robbery conviction.

In total, Jenkins could face between 71 and 78 months, or about six years, in prison. Hanley scheduled Jenkins to be sentenced on June 2, 2023.

During a preliminary hearing for Jenkins in March, the gas station attendant testified that he had known Jenkins as a regular customer. He said that Jenkins was a likable person but that the night of the incident he turned from “Jekyll to Hyde” and started pounding on the counter, demanding money and displaying a firearm, as the Journal-World reported. The clerk said he gave Jenkins $166 and some change.

The woman who drove Jenkins to the store testified that she walked into the store during the robbery and asked what was going on, to which Jenkins yelled at her to go back to the car. She said that when Jenkins came out of the store after the robbery she locked the doors to the car and refused to let him in.

Jenkins has been in custody at the Douglas County jail since his arrest later that day on a $150,000 cash or surety bond.