A man convicted of misdemeanor trespassing on the Hollywood Hills property of model and reality television personality Kendall Jenner but acquitted of a misdemeanor stalking charge is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday, when he’ll face a maximum jail term of six months.
But Deputy Public Defender Taylor J. Shramo, the attorney representing 25-year-old Shavaughn McKenzie, said after the verdict last month that his client had already nearly served that amount of time, with credit allowed under California law.
McKenzie has remained jailed since he was arrested Aug. 14 after approaching Jenner as she waited for the 13-foot-tall gate to her property to close after she drove through.
Jenner — who appears on her family’s reality TV show “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” — identified McKenzie in court Oct. 13 as the man who has “been following me for a couple of years” and said she had “never been so scared in my life” after being approached by him in her driveway.
She testified that she initially asked him nicely twice to leave, then screamed at him another six or seven times to do so.
“I was crying, I was screaming, I was freaking out,” Jenner testified. “I didn’t know what his intentions were … I was frightened for sure.”
She said McKenzie had previously approached her car outside the Westwood condominium complex, including one incident in which she swerved out of the way as he ran up toward her and another time when he approached her vehicle as she waited at a red light and then approached her again after she turned right and then made a U-turn to try to elude him.
Jurors deliberated less than two hours before convicting McKenzie on Oct. 24 of trespassing, but acquitting him of stalking Jenner.
In his closing argument, Deputy City Attorney Alex T. Perez told jurors that McKenzie ventured across the country, figured out the location of Kendall’s residence, staked out the Westwood condominium building where she previously lived and repeatedly approached her even after she took measures to avoid him.
While noting that the jury had heard evidence that McKenzie is “mentally disturbed,” the prosecutor said the defendant had a “single-minded focus” on Jenner and made “remarkable” progress toward his goal of meeting her.
The prosecutor said McKenzie — who had lived in Georgia and Florida — knew from Jenner’s reactions that she was “afraid of him,” yet “still makes contact again and again and again.”
“He’s hitting the (vehicle’s) window … and insisting that she speak with him,” Perez told jurors of the latest run-in between Jenner and McKenzie, noting that a family friend who was speaking on the phone with Jenner could hear what was happening. “He knew the victim was afraid of him.”
Jenner was too afraid to sleep in her own home for three days after the run-in with McKenzie, the prosecutor said.
McKenzie’s attorney countered that his client “never had any malicious intent.”
“He certainly never intended to place her in fear,” Shramo told jurors in his closing argument. “He thought that they could be friends.”
He said his client was “not a danger” and is “not violent.”
The defense attorney said his client was diagnosed in 2012 with “unspecified psychotic disorder” and still suffers from the mental illness.
He told reporters that he was trying to get his client “the treatment he needs.”
