photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Howard Levite Jr. is pictured Wednesday, May 1, 2024, in Douglas County District Court with his attorney, Angelo Panas, right.

A Leavenworth man who admitted shooting another man during a 2019 drug deal in a McDonald’s parking lot has pleaded no contest to the lesser offense of attempted aggravated battery.

Wednesday’s plea from Howard Collins Levite Jr., 32, in Douglas County District Court came 11 weeks after a jury acquitted Levite of attempted first-degree murder in the case. As the Journal-World reported, the jury hung on a count of attempted second-degree murder and attempted robbery, and the state said it intended to retry the case on those counts.

Instead, the state, represented by Assistant District Attorney Ricardo Leal, entered into a deal with Levite, allowing him to plead no contest to attempted aggravated battery with a recommendation that he spend 40 months, or 3.3 years, in prison.

Judge Sally Pokorny convicted Levite of the crime and told him that when she sentences him on June 5, she is not bound by the recommendation in the plea deal.

During Levite’s February trial, a man, who was 51 at the time of the shooting, testified that he had intended to buy pain pills from Levite on Oct. 26, 2019, but that an argument ensued in his car in the restaurant parking lot on Sixth Street, resulting in the man being shot. Levite testified that he had intended to rip the man off by selling him fewer pills than they had agreed upon. He said he shot the man in self-defense when the man grabbed his arm and threatened him with a knife. The man said that the bullet went through his stomach and then out the car door. He said that Levite then ran away and he sought help for his gunshot wound from customers at McDonald’s.

Levite is currently in federal custody after a 2021 conviction in the U.S. District Court of Missouri, where he was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm and intent to distribute Xanax. He is serving 68 months, or 5.6 years, for that conviction and was brought to Douglas County to resolve his charges here. He is expected to also resolve charges for obstruction in Leavenworth County and for fleeing from police in Jackson County.

He has additional convictions in Douglas County in 2010 for robbery and burglary, and felony drug convictions in Leavenworth County in 2012 and Wyandotte County in 2016, according to Kansas Department of Corrections records.