The verdict and sentence followed testimony about days of household tension before an Aug. 21, 2024, shooting.
SAN DIEGO, Calif. — William Bushey was sentenced to life without parole after a jury found that he deliberately hunted down family members inside a Point Loma home, killing his sister and nephew and badly wounding his mother with a shotgun.
Bushey, 61, received two life without parole terms plus 82 years after his January convictions for first-degree murder, premeditated attempted murder and elder abuse with a firearm. The punishment followed weeks of testimony that turned a private family dispute into a detailed public record. Prosecutors said the attack grew out of rising conflict after his sister moved into the home and family members began taking safety steps. Defense lawyers said he was a broken and isolated man who snapped under pressure. The jury accepted the prosecution version, clearing the way for one of the toughest noncapital sentences available.
At the center of the case was the house on Zola Street, where Bushey lived with his mother, June Bushey, in San Diego’s Point Loma neighborhood. According to trial evidence, Laurie Robinson moved in after a separation from her husband, and the living arrangement quickly became unstable. Prosecutors said Bushey had spent years interacting little with relatives and contributing little to the household. Robinson’s arrival sharpened conflict and led to visible signs of fear inside the home. Trial reporting said family members removed knives, changed locks and began looking into both a restraining order and eviction. A surveillance system had even been ordered by the day of the shooting. Police came to the house twice during the nine days after Robinson moved in, responding to angry outbursts that worried the family but did not result in an arrest. Prosecutors later used those nine days to argue that the shooting was the end of an escalating pattern, not an isolated flash of anger without warning.
On Aug. 21, 2024, the argument that had been building inside the house took a final turn. Prosecutors said the family shut off the internet to move the Wi-Fi router from Bushey’s bedroom to his mother’s room. Deputy District Attorney Scott Pirrello told jurors that Bushey angrily confronted an AT&T technician over that move. He then went back inside, prosecutors said, retrieved a shotgun he had purchased in 2012 and kept hidden, loaded it to capacity and took additional shells with him. From there, the attack moved fast but not blindly, according to the state. Bushey pursued his mother and sister as they fled toward the back patio and fired six rounds. Laurie Robinson, 61, was killed. Brett Robinson, 33, her son, came to the house because he was worried and was shot in the kitchen. Pirrello told jurors that Brett Robinson had texted a friend that his uncle was acting “extra sketchy” before he arrived.
The injuries to June Bushey gave jurors both forensic detail and the testimony of a living victim. Prosecutors said she was shot in the chest and suffered catastrophic damage to her right hand, losing most of it. She also suffered a wound to her upper abdomen that missed her heart by centimeters. After being shot, she escaped the home, leaving blood behind as she ran outside. Bushey then called 911 and admitted shooting his sister and nephew, according to local trial coverage. When officers reached the house, they found him on the front doorstep with his hands raised. Those facts helped the state narrow the case to intent and planning rather than identity. The jury had little dispute over who fired the shots. The harder question was whether Bushey had enough deliberation to support first-degree murder and premeditated attempted murder. Prosecutors said the loading of the gun, the extra shells and the chase through the home answered that question clearly.
Defense lawyer Denis Lainez tried to move jurors away from that conclusion by focusing on Bushey’s life before the attack. He described his client as physically and mentally unwell, isolated and terrified by the thought of homelessness. Lainez conceded the shootings happened, but argued they came during an emotional collapse after repeated efforts to push Bushey out of the home. In one of the trial’s most noted lines, he said the killings were the result of decades of anger and resentment that exploded in seconds. The prosecution answer was that emotion did not cancel out action. Pirrello said Bushey armed himself, carried extra ammunition and tracked down relatives who were trying to get away. Jurors returned guilty verdicts on all major counts and found true the special circumstance for multiple murders. That finding made clear at sentencing that Bushey would not have a chance to seek parole later in life.
Judge Joan Weber underscored that point when she imposed sentence in February. Before doing so, she said the two people killed had lost their lives for no reason at all. District Attorney Summer Stephan said the attack showed the devastation caused by family violence and called Bushey savage and ruthless in the way he hunted his own relatives. The hearing was also one of the few moments when the emotional cost to surviving relatives entered the record directly. Laurie Robinson’s sons, Kyle and Ryan Robinson, spoke to Bushey and said they forgave him, according to coverage of the hearing. Kyle Robinson said the family would have helped him and would not have allowed him to become homeless. June Bushey, facing the son who shot her, asked him to turn and look at her. Reports said he did not turn and did not offer a statement of his own.
The case left behind several unanswered questions even as the verdict settled the criminal charges. Public reporting described Bushey as withdrawn and deeply isolated, but it did not establish a full medical explanation for his behavior. Police had been called to the house before the shooting, yet the known facts show no prior arrest from those incidents. Family members had taken practical steps to protect themselves, but prosecutors said they did not know about the shotgun, which had been purchased years earlier and kept secret. Those gaps matter because they show the limits of what the public record can explain. The court resolved criminal responsibility, but not every question about how the household reached a point where ordinary moves like changing locks or relocating a router sat so close to deadly violence.
For now, the case stands at its sentencing endpoint. Bushey remains in prison under a sentence that offers no parole path, and any further action would come only through appellate review. The larger public record is now fixed: a sister who had moved in only days earlier, a nephew who came because he sensed danger, a mother who survived grave wounds, and a defendant whose own 911 call helped close the timeline of a family tragedy that ended in one of San Diego County’s most severe possible prison terms.
Author note: Last updated March 25, 2026.