A 23-year-old man from Sacramento was found guilty of opening fire on a Greyhound bus in Oroville two years ago, killing one woman and hurting four others, including an 11-year-old and a pregnant woman. A judge in Northern California gave him a life term.
Butte Superior Court Judge Corie J. Caraway gave the sentence on Friday. In late April, a jury found Asaahdi Elijah Coleman guilty of killing 43-year-old Karen Dalton while the bus on its way to Los Angeles was stopped at a gas station in Oroville on the night of February 2, 2022.
Coleman shot Dalton twice, once in the face, while she was driving with her 14-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter. Dalton lives in Seattle.
A few days after the murder, Dalton’s family told The Sacramento Bee that she was shot multiple times while trying to protect her children. The bus ride began in Spokane, Washington, with her two children. They were going to see Dalton’s oldest son in New Mexico before continuing their trip to Alabama. The person moving her family there thought it would be cheaper to take the bus.
Three other people were shot during the strange attack, which made people question the 21-year-old suspect’s mental health because he had been in Sacramento youth court before.
He was also found guilty of four counts of attempted murder for shooting Dalton’s daughter, a 25-year-old pregnant woman, a 32-year-old man, and a 38-year-old man. He was also given a lot of extra charges because he was reportedly using a gun during the attack.
Coleman was from Sacramento, but not much is known about his time there. Meanwhile, he also lived in California in a way that police called “transient.”
At the time, Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said that Coleman had been acting strangely and “paranoid” since he got on the bus in Redding, according to the people who were on it. He showed people a 9mm pistol that he had in a small bag at one point.
Police say Coleman, who was sitting in the back of the bus, jumped forward, pulled out a 9mm handgun, waved it at other people on the bus, and started fighting with someone he said was an undercover cop. Honea said in the days following the attack that things got worse from there and Coleman fired “somewhere north of 10 shots.”
After firing shots inside the bus while it was parked at an AM-PM grocery store, Coleman ran away. He was arrested by deputies, police, and other law enforcement officers at a nearby Walmart, where he had allegedly fought with a guy and taken off all of his clothes.
This is what the Butte County District Attorney’s Office said: “During the sentencing phase, Dalton’s daughter spoke to the court via video conference and told the judge that she still has nightmares about Coleman’s attack.”
A victim’s supporter read another victim’s statement. Her name is Rose Whitley, and she is now 27 years old. Judges said she talked about “constant pain from shrapnel that lodged in her tailbone from the shooting” and how her child was born before it was due.
“He spoke from his wheelchair in the courtroom,” the D.A.’s Office said of Bobby Farber, who is now 34 years old. “He said that the shooting had left him permanently paralyzed and in constant pain.”
Chief Deputy District Attorney Mark Murphy made a clear connection between Farber’s “courage” and Coleman’s “cowardice.” He said that Coleman had “anti-social personality disorder” and other behaviors that were “deeply defective and dangerous,” according to a prosecution expert. Murphy said the person was told to get the harshest sentence “to protect the public.”
According to the D.A.’s Office, Caraway gave Coleman a minimum term of 74 years, and 8 months to life because of his history of violent and gun-related crimes as a child and an adult in the Bay Area and Sacramento.
Coleman could be available for parole as early as 2049, when he would be 48 years old, according to prosecutors. This is because of California’s Youthful Offender Parole law.
