Law enforcement responds to the fatal shooting at the McDonalds in Grand Mound in early September.
A 60-year-old Rochester man was sentenced to 13-1/2 years in prison Wednesday for fatally shooting a man who was panhandling outside McDonald’s near Grand Mound in September 2019.
Last month, a jury found Bryan M. Owens guilty of first-degree manslaughter while armed with a firearm.
The state had charged Owens with second-degree murder, but jurors left the verdict form for that charge blank, found him guilty of the lesser crime, and found he was armed with a firearm in a special verdict.
Owens had no previous criminal convictions on his record, and the sentence issued by Thurston County Superior Court Judge Chris Lanese on Wednesday is at the high end of the standard range for someone with his offender score: 78 to 102 months of confinement plus 60 months for the firearm verdict, so 11-1/2 to 13-1/2 years total.
The sentence aligns with what prosecutors recommended based on the nature of the crime, and with requests made by family members of Corey Meyer, the man Owens shot and killed, in victim impact statements filed with the court.
Meyer, 37, was from Texas, and family and friends say he wasn’t homeless, but would travel to northern states and pick up work where it was cooler during summer. The Thurston County Sheriff’s Office believes Meyer had been in the area for about a week before he died Sept. 3, according to The Olympian’s previous reporting.
According to court documents, on Sept. 3 Owens approached a man who regularly panhandles at the McDonald’s near Grand Mound and asked whether he was a veteran and if he was from the area. The men began to argue, and Meyer at some point approached.
An argument between Owens and Meyer became physical and a witness intervened to separate the men, according to court documents. Owens took out his gun.
At trial, defense argued Owens told Meyer to stay away and that Meyer got mad and lunged at Owens when he saw the gun — that he killed Meyer in self defense. Prosecutors argued nothing happened in the fight that warranted lethal force.
In the end, Owens shot Meyer, who witnesses say was unarmed, once in the chest and once in the head.
Owens himself addressed Judge Lanese for about 10 minutes Wednesday. He spoke of his upbringing and history, vouched for his character, reiterated his version of what happened, and expressed his disappointment in how law enforcement handled their investigation, saying they lied, cheated, and manipulated facts to get a conviction.
He expressed remorse while saying Meyer would still be alive if he hadn’t confronted him “aggressively, violently.”
“Your honor, I can’t tell you enough how sorry I am that this whole process took place,” Owens said. “I regret it, every minute I’ve been here I’ve regretted it happened. Not just for what it’s done to my family, but for the sorrow and the heartache that it’s caused Corey’s family. I’m sure it’s immense. But it was his choice, and I did what I had to do after he made that choice.”
Judge Lanese said that, while much of the conversation surrounding the case had focused on homelessness and whether Owens seeks out people who are perceived to be homeless to criticize and harass them, that wasn’t his focus.
“While homelessness is something that is a severely crisis-level issue in our society, and our community specifically, I think the operative moment in this case was when the gun came out,” Lanese said.
Lanese rejected the defense’s request regarding the firearm enhancement and determined it was appropriate to stay in the standard range.
Manslaughter requires a reckless cause of a death, Lanese explained, which could cover a wide range of behaviors. In this case, he said, “the defendant brought a gun to a fist fight.”
