A man convicted in the sniper shooting death of a father who was camping in a tent with two daughters at Malibu Creek State Park was sentenced Wednesday to 119 years to life in prison.
Anthony Rauda, 46, was found guilty last month of second-degree murder in the June 2018 shooting death of Tristan Beaudette, a 35-year-old research scientist from Irvine who was sleeping in a tent with his daughters when he was shot. The jury also convicted Rauda of three counts of attempted murder, including two involving Beaudette's daughters, who were not struck by gunfire, along with five counts of second-degree commercial burglary.
Rauda was acquitted of seven other attempted murder charges involving a series of other early-morning shootings in the same area. Rauda waived his right to be present in the courtroom during the trial, but is expected to be on hand for the sentencing.
He appeared in court Wednesday court in a restraint chair and wearing a spit hood over his head.
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Rauda was sentenced last June to three years and eight months in jail after being convicted of attacking two Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies since he's been in custody. Both of those attacks were caught on surveillance video.
Deputy District Attorney Antonella Nistorescu told jurors the evidence against Rauda was overwhelming. The prosecutor said ballistics testing subsequently linked a rifle that was found in a backpack Rauda was carrying at the time of his arrest to the bullet that killed Beaudette and a shooting that damaged a white Tesla being driven nearby a few days earlier.
Nistorescu said the defendant finally managed to do what he had persistently been trying to do when he killed Beaudette as he was sleeping next to his daughters. Beaudette's youngest daughter's leggings were covered in her father's blood when she knelt next to him after the shooting, the prosecutor said.
The prosecutor alleged that Rauda wore a mask and dark clothing and toted a rifle when he committed the burglaries, including two at the Calabasas Community Center and two at the Las Virgenes Water District between July and October 2018, calling him thorough, deliberate and careful.
After the last break-in, Rauda was tracked down through bootprints and a scent dog to a makeshift encampment on Oct. 10, 2018, Nistorescu said.
Rauda's attorney, Nicholas Okorocha, countered that there was reasonable doubt involving the charges against his client. He told jurors they should watch for an absence of evidence that
indicates gaps in the case.
During emotional testimony, Scott McCurdy told the downtown Los Angeles jury that he was sleeping in a nearby tent when he was awakened by several loud pops that he initially thought may have been fireworks or something from a nearby fire pit and saw "like a flash of light" early the morning of June 22, 2018.
He said he heard one of Beaudette's daughters start to cry and waited for his brother-in-law to calm the girl down, then decided to get out of his own tent to see what was going on when he heard the girl's older sister talking with her.
"I heard the girls crying," he said, telling jurors that Beaudette's youngest daughter said, "Wet, wet" and that he didn't think anything about it at the time.
McCurdy said he tried to verbally comfort the girls while trying to rouse his brother-in-law from sleep and turned on his brother-in-law's phone after noticing that his own hand felt slippery.
"My hand was covered in blood," he said, noting that he turned back to his brother-in-law and saw the girls kneeling in a pool of blood and his brother-in-law's face in a pool of blood.
He said he reached down to try to feel his brother-in-law's neck for a pulse and realized he should get the girls out of the tent and call out to neighboring campers for help.
"I noticed there was nothing in his eyes," he said of Beaudette. "I realized he was gone and I left."
He said he started to put together what had happened to Beaudette and recalled that he had noticed that there was a small hole in the fairly new tent at the campsite, where toys were strewn about and a children's bike was on top of one of the vehicles.
