photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Garnel Moore Williams appears Thursday, May 28, 2026, in Douglas County District Court with attorney Michael Clarke.

A 31-year-old man facing a lengthy prison term choked back tears Thursday as he apologized to a long list of people, expressed regret for endangering them and promised to change his ways.

“I can do better and will do better,” Garnel Moore Williams told Douglas County Judge Amy Hanley, who commended his “articulate and insightful” comments before sentencing him to nearly 11 years in prison, pursuant to a March 3 plea deal between the parties.

Moore Williams was convicted of two felonies — aggravated battery and aggravated assault — in connection with an incident last fall in which Lawrence police said several people were held at gunpoint for hours after Moore Williams claimed money had been stolen from him at an apartment on Michigan Street. He had originally been charged with aggravated kidnapping, aggravated robbery and aggravated assault in the Nov. 23, 2025, incident. Prosecutor Eve Kemple previously told the court that the gun he used at the social gathering was a BB gun.

Hanley sentenced Moore Williams, who has the worst possible criminal history score of “A,” to 130 months on the aggravated battery count and to 12 months on the aggravated assault count, to run concurrently. Because the Douglas County crimes were committed while Moore Williams was on supervision in Shawnee County after felony convictions there, Special Rule 9 requires that his Douglas County sentence run consecutively to his sentence in Shawnee County, where he pleaded guilty in 2018 to robbery, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and criminal discharge of a firearm at an occupied dwelling.

In addition to the Shawnee County crimes, Moore Williams has also been convicted in Douglas County of drug possession in 2017 and burglary in 2014.

“I should have never put anyone in danger,” he told Hanley Thursday. “…I will use every resource available to me to change.”

“It comes down to you,” Hanley said, “and whether you are willing to do the work.”

Sentencing is for accountability, she told him, but it’s also an opportunity for rehabilitation: “Hold yourself accountable,” she said.