Dawson Paine appears at a hearing on Monday, Dec. 16, 2024, in Douglas County District Court.

Updated at 1:07 p.m. Monday, Dec. 16

A Topeka man charged with murdering an 18-year-old while playing with a gun pleaded guilty on Monday just before his jury trial was set to begin.

The man, Dawson Edward Paine, 22, was charged with one felony count of second-degree murder in the shooting death of Davin Kerr, 18, of Lawrence, on March 5, 2024, in the 2900 block of Crestline Drive. Paine killed Kerr while Kerr was playing video games at his grandmother’s house and Paine was playing with a gun in the same room before he pointed it at Kerr and fired, as the Journal-World reported.

Trial was scheduled to begin Monday morning, but before jury selection began potential jurors were dismissed and the parties indicated they had come to an agreement and that Paine would plead to the murder charge.

As part of the plea, Deputy District Attorney David Greenwald said that the state would recommend 84 months, or seven years, in prison. He said Paine would also be required to register as a violent offender for 15 years.

Judge Amy Hanley accepted Paine’s guilty plea, but not before warning Paine that she was not bound by the recommendations of the state and that she could sentence him to more prison time than he expects. She said that with Paine’s criminal history, state sentencing guidelines recommend a sentence of no less than 123 months, or just over 10 years.

In addition to the reduced sentence recommendation, the state agreed to dismiss two pending cases against Paine. Greenwald moved to dismiss one felony count of criminal threat that is alleged to have occurred on March 3, 2023. The state also closed out a case that Paine was on probation for. Paine was convicted in February of one count of endangerment and one count of child endangerment, both misdemeanors, in connection with an incident in 2022 when he threatened a mother and her child. He was sentenced to one year in jail in that case.

He had originally been charged with felony criminal threat in that case as well, but his plea agreement in that case reduced the charge to two misdemeanors and dismissed yet another pending felony criminal threat charge.

Paine has also been linked to another murder case in which his cousin, Cameron Renner, 20, of Topeka, was killed by Maliqe Crenshaw on June 3, 2023.

Renner’s grandmother, Leslie Paine, told the court at Crenshaw’s sentencing that her grandson had unwittingly been pulled into the feud between Paine and a friend of Crenshaw’s and had ended up dying as a result. She said Renner had been at her house just prior to the shooting, eating a bowl of ice cream, when his cousin, Paine, asked him to leave with him, as the Journal-World reported.

Crenshaw, 23, of Lawrence, was sentenced to 31 months in prison in connection with that shooting death. Crenshaw’s sentence was reduced by Judge Stacey Donovan in part because Crenshaw had tried to help Renner after shooting him and drove Renner to the hospital.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct Paine’s hometown. He is from Topeka.