Beaverton man pleads guilty except for insanity in deadly road rage shooting on Highway 18
DALLAS, Ore. (KGW/KTVZ) — The man who shot a Tigard resident nine times while he was returning home from a trip to the Oregon Coast with his wife has pleaded guilty, KGW reports.
On Thursday, Justin Nathaniel McAnulty, 24, pleaded guilty except insane to one count of second-degree murder in Polk County Circuit Court.
As part of his plea deal, McAnulty was sentenced to lifetime commitment under the Oregon Psychiatric Security Review Board (PSRB), with physical confinement at the Oregon State Hospital, according to the Polk County District Attorney's Office.
On July 13, 2022, Tigard resident Dennis Anderson and his wife, Brandy Goldsbury, were driving back from the coast to Portland. Goldsbury told KGW that the driver behind them, McAnulty, got angry while on the highway and passed them.
She thought that was the end of it until she spotted the car pulled over a few miles ahead. When she and Anderson passed the car, it pulled out behind them, and at one point, tried to run them off the road.
Scared, Goldsbury and her husband decided to pull over to call 911, but McAnulty stepped out of the car and "just started shooting."
"I was in my seatbelt," Goldsbury recounted to KGW. "I couldn't get out of my seat fast enough, and there was a lot of shooting."
Though none of the shots hit her, Anderson was killed.
"I don't know if I've fully come to terms with the idea that he's not coming home," she said in 2022. The couple has three children.
McAnulty, then 23, was identified as a suspect and arrested in Sept. 2022.
On Thursday, Goldsbury delivered her victim's statement in court, saying, in part, "I watched the person I loved take his last breaths, lying lifeless on gravel on the side of the road after you shot him nine times...
"It seemed unreal, an eternity in one moment. ... I will never unsee that. These actions are not of man but a monster."
In a statement, Polk County District Attorney Aaron Felton called the trial's outcome "extremely disappointing."
"While McAnulty’s guilty plea at long last takes responsibility for killing Mr. Anderson, I strongly believe that Mr. McAnulty presents a risk to community safety and should be securely confined for the remainder of his life. It is now up to the members of the PSRB and other officials of our state’s mental health system to protect the community from McAnulty," he wrote.
He described the incident a "violent, senseless and cowardly act," adding that many family members spoke out in court about the devastating loss.
"My heart continues to go out to them as they work to move forward and recover," Felton concluded.
