photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Jacob Gilbert appears Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026, at his preliminary hearing in Douglas County District Court.

A Douglas County judge heard evidence Wednesday in a case where a stranger allegedly got high on hallucinogens, walked into a Lawrence family’s home, stripped naked and terrified the occupants in the middle of the night.

But before Judge Sally Pokorny potentially orders the defendant — 19-year-old Jacob Gilbert, of Lawrence — to stand trial, she wants more clarity on whether the most significant allegation of the three charges he faces actually meets the definition of aggravated indecent liberties with a child.

Gilbert faces charges of aggravated residential burglary and misdemeanor battery, but the most serious charge by far is aggravated indecent liberties with a child, which is punishable by a minimum of 25 years in prison.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Jacob Gilbert, left, appears Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026, at his preliminary hearing in Douglas County District Court. His attorney, Nicholas Hayes, is at right. Judge Sally Pokorny is on the bench.

According to testimony at Gilbert’s preliminary hearing Wednesday, on Aug. 10, 2025, he walked through the unlocked front door of a home in central Lawrence, took off his clothes and encountered two girls — both under 10 — sleeping on a couch. The older of the two told a child advocacy interviewer that the stranger sat between her and the other girl, put his hand on her stomach through a layer of blankets and kissed her once on the forehead. The kiss was variously described as “disgusting and slobbery” and like “a bird peck.” The girl indicated that the man covered his penis with his hand but did not touch it.

Pokorny asked prosecutor David Melton and defense attorney Nicholas Hayes to brief her on whether that scenario, if true, could constitute lewd touching under state law. She expects to render a decision on Feb. 20 regarding whether Gilbert will be ordered to stand trial.

The child advocacy interviewer also testified that the girl, parts of whose interview were played for the court, told her that she had squirmed away from the man, who told her “It’s OK” and asked as she was leaving if the other girl was “too young.” She told the interviewer she thought he was “on drugs.”

The girl then went to the parents’ bedroom, followed by the other girl, and told the mother, who was watching TV, about the man. It took the mother a moment to process what the children were telling her, she said, because it sounded like they were saying “there’s a naked man growling on the couch.” She thought it could be referring to the family cat who growled when it jumped on the couch or possibly to a scary movie they had watched earlier in the evening.

But then a man, whom she identified in court as Gilbert, nudged the door open slightly and peered into the bedroom, where the girls’ father was also on the bed, asleep.

“He was staring at me with this smile on his face that I will never get out of my mind,” the woman told the court.

“Who are you? Do I know you? What are you doing in my house?” she said she asked him, wondering if he might be a friend of one of the four teen girls who were having a birthday sleepover in another room. But then he stepped fully into the room — naked and with an erection — and walked toward her, she said.

“I was terrified,” she testified. The stranger didn’t say anything “but just had that smile on his face like he was going to do something to me or the girls.” He completely ignored her, she said, when she screamed at him to leave. “Freaking out,” she hit at the sleeping father next to her.

Startled, he awoke, said “what the F?” and chased Gilbert out of the house after Gilbert threw a punch at him, he testified, describing some fumbling and a “hysterical” scene.

“Everybody was upset,” he said.

When police arrived, the parents were on the front porch and the father said he spotted Gilbert just a few houses down, still naked and slowly walking toward them.

Police then arrested Gilbert without incident. One officer’s body camera footage, played in court Wednesday, recorded Gilbert saying that he had consumed 3.5 grams of “shrooms” and possibly LSD. He answered some questions, such as “who is the president?”, coherently, but said he didn’t know how many quarters were in a dollar. When he was put into the police car and his attention was directed to the car’s lights, he asked, “Is there another party?”

At the jail, bodycam footage indicates a police officer told corrections personnel, “He’s on drugs, so he doesn’t really know what’s happening.”

A police officer testified that the family’s doorbell camera caught Gilbert entering the home wearing a black pair of shorts, and 11 minutes later it caught him lying “on his butt” on the porch after he had been thrown out.

Hayes, Gilbert’s attorney, argued at the end of the hearing that Gilbert’s drug-induced mental state had deprived him of the required intent to commit criminal offenses, especially the off-grid felony of aggravated indecent liberties.

Pokorny, however, said that the question of intent “needs to be left to a jury,” but the first order of business would be settling the matter of whether the allegations could — definitionally — support the most serious charge that Gilbert faces.