photo by: Douglas County Sheriff's Office

Adam Blake Amyx Jr.

Updated at 10:50 a.m. Friday, March 31

A Lawrence man pleaded no contest to attempted murder in the second degree on Wednesday for an incident in 2022 when he attempted to throw a woman off the Kansas River Bridge into the river.

The man, Adam Blake Amyx Jr., 38, was also charged in Douglas County District Court with three felony counts of criminal threat, but those charges were dismissed by the state as a part of a plea agreement.

The charges relate to an incident on April 14, 2022, when a woman was crossing on the southbound side of the bridge and encountered Amyx yelling and cursing and Amyx tried to throw the woman off the bridge, as the Journal-World reported.

Senior Assistant District Attorney David Greenwald said that the factual basis for the attempted murder charge was that as the woman approached Amyx while he was yelling obscenities, she asked “are you talking to me?” Amyx responded by picking her up and trying to throw her over the railing and into the river below. The woman was able to break free, run away and call police. Greenwald said the fall would likely have killed her if Amyx had succeeded.

When police confronted Amyx about the incident later that evening, Amyx told them that “some snitch” was talking about him to police so he said he would “sink her in the f—ing river, bro,” Greenwald said.

Judge Stacey Donovan accepted Amyx’s plea but not before asking him if he was of sound mind to enter such a plea.

Amyx told Donovan that he has mental health problems that make it difficult for him to make decisions at times but that he was currently on medication and that he felt confident he was able to make the plea decision.

Donovan said that Amyx could face between 55 and 247 months in prison, or more than 20 years, depending on his criminal history. Amyx’s conviction comes with a presumptive prison sentence, Donovan said, but the terms of his plea agreement allow his attorney, Michael Clarke, to argue for a dispositional departure to probation at Amyx’s sentencing hearing. Amyx will be required to register as a violent offender, Donovan said.

Amyx was convicted in Douglas County in 2015 for a low-level drug possession felony, according to court records. He has multiple misdemeanor convictions in Douglas County, including domestic battery in 2005 and 2010 and disorderly conduct convictions in 2009 and 2011.

Donovan scheduled Amyx to be sentenced on May 26. Amyx was then returned to the Douglas County Jail, where he has been in custody since his arrest on a $50,000 bond.

— Editor’s note: This story has been edited to reflect that the woman was alone when she encountered Amyx.