photo by: Douglas County Sheriff's Office

Evan Gauge Heffner

A 21-year-old Eudora man who is still on parole for a 2023 Lawrence shooting — one that, according to a legal fiction, didn’t involve a gun — is back in the Douglas County Jail this week facing charges of additional violent crimes.

Evan Gauge Heffner was charged Tuesday with three felonies, aggravated battery, aggravated domestic battery and criminal threat; and two misdemeanors, criminal restraint and criminal damage to property. All five charges involve the same victim in an incident that occurred Monday.

Judge Stacey Donovan appointed attorney Branden Smith to represent Heffner and, at the state’s request, set his bond at $50,000 cash or surety.

In its bond request the state said that “the alleged conduct here is very violent,” and it noted that Heffner has a previous conviction of aggravated battery, was on parole at the time of the Monday incident and had failed to appear in court seven times in two years.

As he faced the court via video from the jail, Heffner acknowledged that he was still wearing an ankle monitor from the Kansas Department of Corrections, where he had recently been imprisoned after shooting Harlan Lee Epps in the arm on May 10, 2023, at Motel 6, 1130 N. Third St.

In that case, Heffner was sentenced in January 2025 to 18 months after his charge was reduced from attempted murder to aggravated battery as part of a plea deal. The state also agreed to drop several other misdemeanor cases against Heffner, including driving without a license, two charges of domestic battery and one charge of battery.

Most importantly, the deal also involved an agreement by the parties to the legal fiction that no gun was used during the shooting, or as it’s described in the plea agreement, “no deadly weapon finding.” If the court had found that a gun was used, Special Rule 1 would have required a mandatory prison sentence under state guidelines. Without the firearm finding, though, Donovan had the discretion to grant Heffner probation or to send him to prison.

Donovan rejected Heffner’s tearful request for probation; however, she did reduce his three-year prison sentence by half, citing his age at the time, 18, his lack of criminal history, his need for drug-addiction treatment and her belief that he had feared for his life the night of the incident.

He had pleaded with Donovan at that hearing last winter, saying that if he were granted probation he would be sure to teach his younger siblings not to be like him or to do the things he had done.

Heffner, who also picked up charges this week of speeding and driving without a license, is next scheduled to appear in court on Feb. 24.