Freeway Shooter Who Left Driver Paralyzed Receives 10-Year Term

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

Morgan, a 33-year-old 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 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.”

‘Angry Man’

“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 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 freeway shootings in Southern California during the summer months that gained nationwide attention.