photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

The Douglas County Judicial and Law Enforcement Center is pictured on Nov. 25, 2025.

A Douglas County judge on Monday ordered a Lawrence man to stand trial on multiple felonies after a pregnant woman testified that he choked her and threatened to kill her and her baby.

The defendant, Patrick Gage Foster, 26, was originally charged with one count of aggravated domestic battery and one count of felony criminal threat for his alleged actions on Nov. 13, 2025, but after hearing the woman testify and listening to audio recordings she made of the incident, Judge Sally Pokorny ordered Foster to stand trial on five more charges: another count of aggravated domestic battery, two more counts of criminal threat and two misdemeanor counts of domestic battery, for a total of seven charges.

The woman testified that Foster came home intoxicated, pushed and shoved her around the house and choked her twice, in addition to threatening to kill her and the baby or have others do it for him. In the audio recordings made on her phone, she could be heard crying and pleading with Foster to stop. At times she is heard to say “I can’t breathe!” amid muffled sobs and sounds. She also desperately pleads with him not to hurt her dog, which she said he had targeted and had struck in some manner.

The male voice on the recording is heard calling the woman profane names and telling her to “Shut up!” and “You don’t ever deserve to be a mom.”

The encounter ended when Foster passed out, she said, at which time she was able to grab her phone and her dog and to call the police, whom she met around 3 a.m. at a store parking lot. Prosecutor Todd Hiatt began to play the police officer’s body camera footage of the interview, but Pokorny cut it off, saying she had heard enough to make a probable cause ruling.

Foster’s attorney, Branden Smith, asked the woman if she had marks on her neck after the incident or if she had reported previous violence she had alleged by Foster, to which she said no. He argued to Pokorny that the woman had not really been choked since she could still breathe and talk in the recordings.

Pokorny, however, noted that Kansas’ domestic battery statute does not say that a victim’s breathing must entirely be stopped; rather, it says only that “normal breathing” must have been impeded.

Foster is scheduled to next appear in court on Friday for arraignment on the amended complaint.