Court records showed police visits, lock changes and a planned eviction before the killings at a Point Loma home.
SAN DIEGO, Calif. — A San Diego judge sentenced William Bushey to spend the rest of his life in prison after finding he killed his sister and nephew and gravely injured his mother in a Point Loma shooting tied to rising family conflict.
Bushey, 61, was sentenced on Feb. 25 to two terms of life without parole plus 82 years after a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder, premeditated attempted murder and elder abuse with a firearm. Prosecutors said the case was not a sudden unexplained outburst, but the end point of a tense nine-day stretch during which relatives feared him, called police twice and were preparing to remove him from the home. That history shaped both the trial and the punishment, because the state argued the attack was planned and relentless.
The killings happened Aug. 21, 2024, at the Zola Street house where Bushey lived with his mother, June Bushey. Prosecutors said his sister, Laurie Robinson, had moved in after separating from her husband, changing the household almost overnight. Trial testimony described Bushey as withdrawn and angry, with much of his day centered on playing computer games in his room. Deputy District Attorney Scott Pirrello said Robinson’s arrival sharpened long-standing family tension and raised concerns about Bushey’s conduct. In the days that followed, Robinson and June Bushey removed knives from the house, changed the locks and moved toward obtaining a restraining order and starting an eviction. A surveillance system had also been ordered for the home by the day of the shootings, according to the district attorney’s office. Those steps showed, prosecutors argued, that fear inside the house had already become serious before anyone was shot.
Hours before the attack, prosecutors said, the family shut off the home internet to move the Wi-Fi router from Bushey’s bedroom to his mother’s room. Pirrello told jurors that Bushey angrily confronted an AT&T technician outside the home over the change. The prosecution said he then turned his anger on his family, went into his room and retrieved a shotgun he had bought in 2012 but kept hidden from relatives. He loaded the gun, took extra shells and moved through the house searching for them, prosecutors said. Laurie Robinson and June Bushey fled toward the back patio, but Bushey fired six rounds from the shotgun while pursuing them. Laurie Robinson, 61, died. Brett Robinson, 33, Laurie’s son, was shot in the kitchen after coming to the house because he was worried about the situation. Trial reporting said he had texted a friend that his uncle seemed “extra sketchy” before he was killed.
June Bushey survived, but her injuries became one of the most powerful parts of the case. Prosecutors said she was shot in the chest and hand, lost most of her right hand and suffered a wound to her upper abdomen that missed her heart by only a small distance. After she was hit, she escaped the house and left a trail of blood outside. Bushey then called 911 and admitted he had shot his sister and nephew, according to courtroom accounts. Officers arrived and found him sitting on the front doorstep with his hands raised. Those facts mattered at trial because they gave jurors a straightforward timeline and direct evidence that Bushey was the shooter. The larger fight was over his state of mind. Prosecutors said his steps before and during the attack showed method and intent. The defense said he acted in a storm of emotion brought on by pressure, isolation and the prospect of losing his home.
Defense attorney Denis Lainez told jurors that Bushey’s life had narrowed into illness, anger and dependence, and that the family’s efforts to force him out pushed him past control. He described the killings as the product of years of resentment that burst out in seconds. But the prosecution answer was simple and direct: emotion did not erase planning. Pirrello pointed to the secret gun, the loading of extra shells, the chase through the house and the number of shots fired. Jurors sided with the state in January, convicting Bushey on all major counts and finding true a special circumstance allegation for multiple murders. That finding is important in California because it supports the harshest penalties even when prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty. In this case, it left life without parole as the sentence that fit the verdict.
The trial also brought attention to the limits of earlier intervention. Police had been called to the Point Loma house twice in the nine days before the shootings because of Bushey’s angry behavior. One call came after knives were removed from the home. Another followed a lock change, after Bushey reportedly broke off a doorknob to get inside. Officers did not arrest him because the incidents described at those times did not rise to criminal conduct, according to prosecutors and local trial coverage. The family, meanwhile, was trying to protect itself with the tools available to it inside the house. By the final day, those steps included preparing for eviction and relocating the internet equipment out of Bushey’s room. Prosecutors argued that those facts showed a home under strain, with relatives taking visible steps to protect themselves while still not knowing a hidden shotgun was nearby.
Sentencing added another layer to the case by showing how survivors and relatives were trying to live with what happened. District Attorney Summer Stephan said family violence sends damage far beyond the people directly attacked. Judge Joan Weber told Bushey that the two people killed lost their lives for no reason at all before imposing consecutive life without parole terms. Family members also used the hearing to speak directly to him. Laurie Robinson’s sons, Kyle and Ryan Robinson, said they forgave their uncle, according to courtroom coverage. Kyle Robinson said the family would have helped Bushey instead of leaving him homeless if he had accepted help. June Bushey, the only surviving victim of the shooting itself, asked her son to turn and face her during her statement. Reports from the hearing said he did not respond and made no statement of his own.
With sentencing complete, the criminal case has reached its clearest public endpoint. Bushey will remain in state custody under a punishment that offers no parole date. Any future movement would have to come through appeals or other court review, not through a scheduled release process. For the Robinson and Bushey families, the next milestone is less a court date than the long aftermath of a case that began with household conflict and ended with a double killing, a wounded mother and a courtroom record that laid out, in painful detail, how quickly fear inside a home can turn into fatal violence.
Author note: Last updated March 25, 2026.