Daleville man sentenced to 20 years for attempted murder after randomly shooting another driver
Matt Elofson
Daleville, AL
A Daleville man received a 20-year prison sentence Tuesday for attempted murder in the shooting of a woman as she traveled inside an occupied vehicle on U.S. 84.
Court records show Circuit Court Judge Kimberly A. Clark sentenced 51-year-old Christopher Bruce Sasser to serve 20 years in prison. Sasser received the prison sentence for both the felony attempted murder and felony shooting into an occupied vehicle charges, which he pleaded guilty to in September.
Daleville police arrested Sasser in December 2014 and charged him with using a 9mm handgun to shoot into an occupied vehicle traveling beside him on U.S. 84. Police said as many as seven shots were fired at the vehicle, which was occupied by a family riding down the highway.
Police said the driver of the vehicle, a woman, was injured. She was taken to Medical Center Enterprise for treatment to a gunshot wound to her left foot. The vehicle was occupied by four other people, including two teenagers, and their grandmother.
Daleville police investigators found no motive for the shooting, and called it random.
“He made the statement to his passenger ‘to be a man you got to kill somebody.’ That’s when he pulled a gun out from underneath the seat and started shooting,” then Daleville Police Sgt. Jason Grantham said at the time. “When he got finished shooting he said ‘that’s how you kill somebody.’”
Police filed an attempted murder charge against Sasser for each person traveling inside the victim’s vehicle. Three other attempted murder charges were dismissed as part of the guilty plea agreement.
Sasser drove a red pickup truck and the victims traveled in a GMC Yukon.
Police also found a 9mm handgun hidden underneath some meth in a storage shed behind Sasser’s home as part of the investigation. Sasser also pleaded guilty to a felony manufacturing meth charge in September, but he has not been sentenced for that case yet.