Daniel Keough pleaded guilty Tuesday to the 2023 murder of a Toledo-area gas station worker and to a series of crimes committed during an attempted escape from the Lewis County Juvenile Detention Center last year.
Sentencing is scheduled for 10 a.m. on Feb. 2.
Keough, 18, accepted a plea deal 20 days before his murder trial was scheduled to begin.
He entered In Re Barr pleas — meaning he pleaded guilty to lesser charges that he did not commit in order to benefit from a plea deal — on three charges spread between the two cases: second-degree murder, second-degree unlawful possession of a firearm, and first-degree escape.
Unlike an Alford plea, an In Re Barr plea does not stipulate that the defendant is innocent.
Keough also pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree assault for attacking two Lewis County Juvenile Detention Center employees during his January 2025 escape attempt.
As part of the plea deal, the Lewis County Prosecutor’s Office indicated it will recommend a sentence of 295 months, roughly 24.5 years.
The recommendation is at the high end of the standard sentencing range, calculated based on the defendant’s criminal history and the severity of the crime, for the murder charge.
Keough was 15 years old when he and his two codefendants, Taylor Lenihan and Quinton Ramey, all from Redding, California, were arrested for first-degree robbery and first-degree murder in May 2023 following the murder of 30-year-old Navjot Singh.
Lenihan and Ramey, who were 16 and 17, respectively, at the time, were both charged as adults.
Keough was initially charged as a juvenile, but had his case elevated to Lewis County Superior Court in December.
Ramey pleaded guilty to murder and robbery charges in November 2024 and was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
Lenihan pleaded guilty to robbery and firearm possession charges shortly after her arrest in May 2023, but her sentencing has been delayed until her codefendants' cases are resolved.
