‘I feared him and dreaded when he came home’: Hannibal man sentenced to 12 years for beating woman in August 2022 case

QUINCY — A Hannibal man charged with attempted first-degree murder in August 2022 was sentenced to 12 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections on Thursday afternoon in Adams County Circuit Court.

Jayshon A. Levy, 22, appeared with Public Defender Mark Taylor before Judge Holly Henze. He has been charged with one count of attempted first-degree murder, a Class X felony punishable for between six and 30 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections, and three counts of aggravated domestic battery, a Class 2 felony punishable for between three and seven years in prison.

Levy agreed to plead guilty to amended charges of one count of armed violence, a Class 2 felony, and one count of aggravated battery, a Class 3 felony. He received seven years in the Illinois Department of Corrections on the armed violence charge and five years on the aggravated battery charge. The sentences will run consecutively. Levy must serve 50 percent of his sentences.

As part of plea negotiations, the attempted first-degree murder charge and the aggravated domestic battery charges were dismissed. Levy must pay all the mandatory fines, fees, costs and assessments in this case in the amount of $39,249.10. He will receive credit for 239 days in the Adams County Jail.

Charging documents filed in Adams County Circuit Court alleged Levy strangled a woman (identified here as A.S.), holding her head underwater, hitting her with a shower curtain rod and holding a knife to her throat on Aug. 31, 2022. He also punched A.S. in the face, breaking her eye socket, on July 31, 2022.

Trisha Hubbard, victim witness advocate for the Adams County State’s Attorney’s Office, read a victim impact statement in court on behalf of A.S.

“Aug. 31, 2022, will always be a day I remember so vividly in my head,” the statement said. “Never in a million years would I think I would be fighting to keep myself alive in a house with my once-boyfriend and someone I once loved and cared about. All the good and bad days were part of what I thought was a normal relationship, I quickly realized this was not normal at all.

“Getting beat on is not normal at all. Being drug and thrown downstairs, not just one time but multiple times, and then stomped on, spit on, things thrown at me and even ending up with a broken eye socket, black eyes, broken ribs and a busted-open head, busted lips and constant black bruises. (There was) nobody to stop him from what he was doing, nobody to help me, not even his own family when they were around. They just watched it happen.”

A.S. wrote that she couldn’t show her face to family members or tell them what was happening because she was scared for what Levy would do next. 

“If I told my family, he threatened harm to them,” she wrote. “I was forced to lie to friends and co-workers for fear of being beat even more by him. And all the while I worked, he’d access my bank account, spend all my money, slept, played video games or took off with my car, wrecking it numerous times and having it impounded. I feared him and dreaded when he came home. I lived with a constant ‘what if.’”

A.S. said Levy came home after midnight on Aug. 31, 2022, and was angry because nothing had been prepared for supper.

“The next thing I knew, I was fighting for my life,” she wrote. “He tried suffocation, choking me, dragging me down the stairs by my hair, throwing glass bottles at me, punching and beating me with a rod to the point I couldn’t breathe, and tried drowning me in the shower. All the while, I just kept thinking in my head, ‘I’m going to die in this house. He’s going to kill me this time for real.’”

She wrote that Levy permanently damaged her face, leaving her with one functioning nostril and a metal plate in her face. She suffers from PTSD, anxiety and depression. 

“This wasn’t a one-time thing,” A.S. wrote. “This was constant years of abuse. My life is forever changed by his actions and years of abuse.”

Levy was offered an opportunity to make a statement of allocution but refused.

Detectives and members of the West Central Illinois Task Force traveled May 29, 2024, to Phoenix to find Levy. They worked with a joint violent crimes task force to apprehend Levy on the next day. Levy was held in the Maricopa County Jail in Phoenix, then extradited to the Marion County (Mo.) Jail. A warrant was issued for his arrest on June 18 for a parole violation. Levy had been found guilty of possession of a controlled substance and sentenced to seven years in the Missouri Department of Corrections on Feb. 8, 2022. However, he received a suspended execution of that sentence and was placed on five years of probation.