OAKLAND — A Millbrae man who drove the van while his accomplice opened fire at a federal security booth in 2020, killing one court officer and wounding another, was sentenced to life in federal prison Friday.
The sentence virtually guarantees that Robert Allen Justus will die in prison, barring a successful appeal. He was convicted last year of murder and attempted murder, in a trial where his lawyers attempted to shift blame to his severed co-defendant, Steven Carrillo, a U.S. Air Force sergeant stationed at Travis Air Force Base at the time.
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers handed down the sentence Friday morning, at the same Oakland building where Carrillo shot and killed FPS Officer David Patrick Underwood of Pinole on May 29, 2020.
Both Justus and Carrillo were followers of the so-called Boogaloo movement, a loosely organized anti-government group that believed a second U.S. Civil War was imminent. They met on Facebook, and days later met up at an East Bay BART station, drove to Oakland and opened fire at a security booth where Underwood and his partner, Sombat Mifovic who was shot four times.
Mifovic gave a tearful statement to the court Friday, describing his multiple surgeries, physical therapy and pain he still lives with.
“The scars remind me every day,” Mifovic said. He later added that because of his recurring pain, “My wife can no longer rest her head on my shoulder.”
A week after the attack, in early June 2020, Carrillo ambushed Santa Cruz County deputies and California Highway Patrol officers near his Ben Lomond home, killing Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller and wounding three others.
After Carrillo’s arrest on those charges, Justus had his mother and father drive him to the FBI building in San Francisco, where he confessed but also claimed Carrillo threatened and coerced him into participating. He repeated those claims on the witness stand during his trial, which Justus’ lawyer said he still believes.
“I believe that everything he said was truthful and always have,” the attorney, Richard Novak, said as several of Underwood’s loved ones exited the courtroom, some murmuring words of disgust.
Novak said he and Justus knew what the outcome of Friday’s sentencing hearing would be, but that he hopes the justice system will be reformed to allow the possibility of parole from federal life sentences.
Underwood’s sister called Justus “a coward” and said that her brother bled to death on the pavement “all due to the fact that you, sir, decided to kill someone, anyone, just because of the position that they held.”
Justus apologized in court “from the bottom of my heart.”
“I’m so sorry for it. I don’t want to ask for forgiveness. I wish I could give them back everything that they lost,” Justus said. “I would give my life for theirs, not just because of the sentence I faced but honestly because I wish that things had happened differently that night.”
Justus added, though, that “I don’t believe justice is being served in this case,” noting that Carrillo may end up a free man if he’s granted state parole and serves his four decades in federal prison.
Justus had hardly finished speaking before Gonzalez Rogers flatly told him, “I don’t believe you.” She reminded him that when he testified to his version of events during trial, she was sitting just a few feet away, watching.
“Every time you lied, your temple would tighten. That’s what I saw. I had the vantage point to see that,” Gonzalez Rogers said. “You lied because you knew what the sentence would be.”
“You’re kidding yourself if you don’t believe you had a critical part in killing Pat Underwood and injuring Mr. Mifovic…But for you driving that van, (Underwood) would be alive,” Gonzalez Rogers said. She later said the killing and its aftermath were right out of the “Boogaloo Boys playbook.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Lee also hit back against the idea of Justus as an unwilling participant, saying it happened after “months” of Justus “spewing violent rhetoric” against law enforcement online, and him searching the residential address of an officer who pulled him over in the East Bay.
Those words, Justus said, “were not an honest representation of my character.”
When Carrillo and Justus parked Carrillo’s white van near the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building in downtown Oakland, Justus left to scout the area, then returned to the van and got behind the wheel, Lee said.
“One drove while the other fired. Mr. Justus’ conduct was fully integrated in the commission of this crime. In fact, the two men did together what neither of them could have done alone.” He described the duo as “far-right, anti-government extremists” who hoped the attack would “destabilize society and spark a revolution.”
After Underwood was shot, police were forced to abandon the crime scene because of protests over the murder of George Floyd that came to the same federal building, Lee said.
At the end of his statement, Mifovic described Underwood as a “kind and caring person” who would help colleagues with weekend projects.
“I was denied an opportunity to grow my friendship with a great man, David Patrick Underwood,” he said through tears. “I miss you my friend.”