photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Jayce Tyler Ingham is pictured at a preliminary hearing on May 18, 2023, in Douglas County District Court. He was ordered to stand trial on two counts of second-degree attempted murder for allegedly grabbing the steering wheel of a van he was a passenger in and trying to crash it after threatening to kill the driver.

A man received two years of probation on Friday in Douglas County District Court in a case where he was accused of trying to grab the steering wheel of a van he was a passenger in and crash it.

The man, Jayce Tyler Ingham, 36, of Iola, was originally slated to stand trial on two counts of attempted murder. However, in August, he took a plea agreement in which he pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated assault instead, according to court records.

On Friday, Judge Stacey Donovan sentenced Ingham to 24 months in prison for the first count and 12 months for the second count, for a total of three years. She then suspended that sentence to two years of probation, in accordance with state sentencing guidelines.

The incident Ingham was convicted for took place at 7:50 p.m. Dec. 2, 2022, near the intersection of Clinton Parkway and Crestline Drive. As the Journal-World reported, Ingham is alleged to have pulled the wheel of a moving van in which he was a passenger in an attempt to steer it off the road.

The driver testified in May that she and Ingham had been in a relationship for a long time, and that he was “yelling about trying to kill me,” but that she didn’t believe he would actually hurt her. Her son, who was 17, was also in the vehicle, and he testified in May that he had to walk Ingham to a bathroom before the incident because Ingham was so drunk he could barely stand.

A police officer who responded to the scene said the boy told him that the woman was able to “hit the brakes” in time to stop the van before it could crash into a metal stoplight pole at the side of the road.

Before the sentence was read on Friday, the woman addressed the court and said she didn’t want Ingham to go to prison.

“I just don’t want him to go to jail. I want him home. He has been doing really good,” the woman said.

Ingham also addressed the court and said he had been living in a sober living facility and attending Narcotics Anonymous classes five to six times a week. He said that although he was unemployed, he was working with the staff at his sober living facility to secure identification documents that he would need to look for work.

“I can, honestly, follow through with the terms of my probation,” he said. “This is a shot that I can take and run with.”

In addition to probation, Donovan ordered Ingham to get a domestic violence evaluation and to follow any recommendations made by the evaluator.