Freeway Shooter Who Left Driver Crippled Gets Maximum 10 Years

Albert Carroll Morgan, who fired a shot from his pickup truck last summer in Costa Mesa that left a young man paralyzed for life, on Friday was given a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and ordered to pay $10,000 in restitution.

Morgan, 33, a roofer from Santa Ana, was convicted last month of attempted voluntary manslaughter, assault with a deadly weapon and firing at an occupied vehicle. But he was acquitted of attempted murder, which could have meant a sentence of life in prison.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Jean H. Rheinheimer listed several reasons at Friday’s hearing in Santa Ana for giving Morgan the maximum sentence. She mentioned that he had been driving under the influence of alcohol, had an open alcoholic container in his truck and was illegally in possession of a loaded firearm.

She also spoke of how the victim, Paul Gary Nussbaum of Rolling Hills Estates, was “defenseless, unguarded and unprotected.”

“He (Nussbaum) had no idea that a very angry man was in a vehicle next to him,” the judge said, her voice almost shaking with anger. Looking directly at Morgan, she added: “In the football vernacular, it was a cheap shot.”

The 29-year-old victim, paralyzed from the neck down, sat quietly in a wheelchair in the back of the courtroom during the sentencing.

Later, he told reporters that the anger and frustration he had felt when Morgan was acquitted of attempted murder had been detrimental to his health and had caused him a setback in his physical therapy at Rancho Los Amigos Hospital in Downey.

“Right now, I just want to put this all behind me and get on with my life,” Nussbaum said.

The shooting occurred July 18, 1987, in bumper-to-bumper traffic at the end of the Costa Mesa Freeway near the Orange County Fairgrounds. It was one of a rash of summer freeway shootings in Southern California that gained nationwide attention.

Morgan, who was on his way to the County Fair with his wife, Lonnie Joy, was seen by a witness firing a .22-caliber pistol out the right passenger window--past his wife’s face--as Nussbaum’s vehicle started to pass him on the right. The victim, who was traveling alone, was hit in the neck, and his car crashed into a vehicle driven by a woman with a small child, who escaped injury.

Judge Rheinheimer also cited the potential harm to those two in giving Morgan the maximum possible sentence.

A witness testified that Morgan had exchanged angry words and gestures with another motorist who had passed him on the right minutes before. Nussbaum, a USC graduate who had been an active marathon runner, is scheduled to go home from the hospital next week. Except for a temporary home visit and two trips to court for hearings in Morgan’s case, Nussbaum has been hospitalized since the shooting. He is paralyzed from the neck down.

Nussbaum did not speak during Morgan’s sentencing, but a statement from his mother, Gloria Nussbaum, who was in the courtroom, was read by Jeannette Barry of the Los Angeles city attorney’s victims’ assistance program.

Nussbaum wrote that her son “often says that he wishes the bullet that has made him totally dependent on others had killed him. . . . The charge of attempted murder was incorrect; a death did occur--a death to (his) physically active sports life, a death to the spirit and hopes (Paul’s and ours).”

The Nussbaum family suggested to the court that Morgan should have to pay financially for the rest of his life for Paul Nussbaum’s medical expenses--estimated at a minimum of $50,000 a year.

Judge Rheinheimer told the Nussbaums that such an order was beyond her authority, although she could understand the request.

The judge ordered Morgan to pay $10,000 to the state victim restitution fund. Morgan’s attorney, Paul S. Meyer, told the court that Morgan and his family are requesting that the money be paid directly to the Nussbaums. The judge said she would find out whether she had the authority to issue such an order.

Nussbaum, who planned a career in social work, said after the court hearing that he wants to work with other spinal patients “who are suffering even worse than me.”

He said being in court Friday was like being forced to relive the entire incident again.

On the day he was shot, Nussbaum had been on his way to visit a friend in Newport Beach.

Morgan testified that he had been drinking “rum and Pepsi” after getting off work that day and had a tumbler of the drink in his pickup.

Morgan testified that he was still upset by the driver who had passed him on the right earlier and others who followed. Morgan admitted that he was angry when he shot at Nussbaum’s car but denied that he had tried to kill him.

Morgan was arrested at the fairgrounds a short time later by police, who found the weapon tucked inside the seat of his truck.

Meyer argued for a sentence of 8 1/2 years instead of the maximum of 10. But later, when asked by reporters if the judge’s sentence was fair, he emphatically said, “Yes.”

Meyer insists that his client is devastated by what happened and highly remorseful. But Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher P. Kralick told the court Friday that he did not believe that Morgan is remorseful at all.

Members of the Nussbaum family have said repeatedly that they have seen no remorse in Morgan.

Despite the jury’s acquittal of Morgan on the attempted murder charge, Kralick told the court that the shooting was “cold and calculated . . . we can never adopt the punishment that appropriately fits this crime.”

Said Meyer: “The emotions generated by this case are unfathomable.”