Man who shot at Wichita cops during protest pleads guilty in separate case involving teens
A Wichita man serving a 25-year prison sentence for shooting at Wichita police during a 2020 protest at 21st and Arkansas has pleaded guilty to an amended count of aggravated battery in a separate case tied to the alleged sexual assaults of two underage girls.
Henry E. Parker, 32, pleaded guilty Friday ahead of a jury trial that was due to start earlier this week. He is scheduled for sentencing on Oct. 25 and faces up to 11 years, four months in prison, his plea agreement and other court records show.
Attorneys plan to ask Parker’s sentencing judge to let him serve the new sentence concurrent to, or at the same time as, the sentence he received for the protest shooting, according to his plea agreement.
A judge in February 2023 sentenced Parker to 300 months after jurors convicted him of nearly two dozen crimes for carrying out a targeted attack on Wichita police officers trying to disperse an unruly crowd following a mostly peaceful protest in June 2020. The protest called for an end to police brutality after the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, killed by a white former Minnesota police officer.
Parker left an overnight shift at his gas station job, drove to the protest and “emptied a whole clip” on police officers because he was upset that a female friend had been hit with a rubber or foam bullet used by cops after rioters hurled objects at them and refused to leave. Debris from the gunfire grazed at least two officers’ riot helmets and made several others fear for their lives. Parker claimed he wasn’t at the protest when the shooting happened and that police had the wrong man.
In the case of the teenagers, Parker was accused of molesting the girls, who were 14 and 15, in separate incidents in 2019 and 2020, before the protest. He was a friend of one victim’s family and a friend of the other victim’s boyfriend, according to court records.
Parker originally faced the sex crimes allegations at a trial last fall where jurors found him guilty of battering one girl but couldn’t reach a unanimous decision about whether he raped and took aggravated indecent liberties against the other. Prosecutors were poised to try Parker again this week for rape and aggravated indecent liberties but worked out a deal to resolve the case if Parker pleaded guilty to an amended count of aggravated battery with sexual motivation, a spokesman for the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office confirmed.
In Kansas, an aggravated battery is where someone knowingly or recklessly causes great bodily harm, disfigurement or physical contact to another person. Sometimes a deadly weapon is involved. “Sexually motivated” means a person committed a crime for their own sexual gratification.
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This story was originally published September 18, 2024 at 12:19 PM.
