09/15/2026
I am glad he is getting the help he needs now, and I hope he continues down this path. However, the impact this day had on the customers at the bar (and the families at the library), still affect them today.
- The Bullpen
Baldwin City man gets nearly 20 years for shooting at bar, library; mother and attorney highlight his mental health issues
Kim Callahan
Published Mon Sep 14, 2026 7:30 PM CDT
A Baldwin City man on Monday was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison for opening fire outside a bar and the town's public library nearly four years ago.
"I feel very bad about all this, and I'm sorry that any of it happened," Junah Sisney told Judge Stacey Donovan at his sentencing in Douglas County District Court.
Sisney, 23, was convicted in July after pleading guilty to one count of attempted first-degree murder, one count of attempted second-degree murder and one count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, pursuant to a plea agreement with the state.
Deputy District Attorney David Melton, in providing a factual basis for Sisney's plea, said that on Dec. 30, 2022, Sisney — intending to kill people — drove from Baldwin City to a relative's home in Arkansas, where, without permission, he retrieved a gun. He then drove back to Baldwin City, where that evening he drove by the Bullpen bar twice and the Baldwin City Public Library once and fired multiple rounds out his car window toward people inside and outside those establishments. No one was physically injured.
Sisney's attorney, Branden Smith, revisited that factual basis Monday, not disagreeing with it but highlighting that Sisney had committed those crimes while suffering from schizophrenia, autism, hallucinations and other conditions that he had suffered from since childhood.
He noted that his client took responsibility by pleading guilty and by not asking for a departure in sentencing, but he wanted to make the court aware of a gap in medical treatment that he believed had contributed to Sisney's conduct - namely that after he turned 18, it took a year and a half for him to get a disability declaration that would have helped him afford the mental health care he needed. That declaration came a week after the shootings, Smith said.
Sisney's mother also addressed the court, at times through tears. She told Donovan that the family had made many efforts to get Sisney the help he needed but that it became very difficult after he became a legal adult. She bemoaned the belated declaration of disability but said that Sisney's family would also "have a say" in his care now.
"We are very sorry about this incident," she said.
In her sentence, Donovan followed the recommendation of the parties, giving Sisney 176 months for attempted first-degree murder and 59 months for attempted second-degree murder, to run consecutively, and 12 months for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, to run concurrently to the other two counts, for a controlling sentence of 235 months, or 19.5 years.
Sisney has been in custody since his arrest and will be entitled to 1,354 days, or nearly four years, of jail credit.
Smith, saying that Sisney had shown dramatic improvement under proper medication, asked the court to request a "mental health placement" for Sisney so that he could continue on that path. Donovan said she could request that from the Kansas Department of Corrections but had no power to order where a sentence would be served.
She told Sisney that the best way to make sure he didn't end up back in court was to tend to his mental health needs.
"It is very sad that there was this gap in your care," she said, "...and that you made the decisions that you made and put many lives in jeopardy."
She said that Sisney had noted in his pre-sentence investigation that he'd think about the crimes for the rest of his life.
"I believe that," Donovan said.
None of the victims in the case attended Monday's sentencing, and no impact statements were read to the court.
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