The 23-year-old Sacramento man convicted of opening fire inside a Greyhound bus in Oroville two years ago — killing one woman and wounding four others including an 11-year-old and a pregnant woman — was sentenced to life in prison by a Northern California judge.

The sentence was handed down Friday by Butte Superior Court Judge Corie J. Caraway after a jury in late April convicted Asaahdi Elijah Coleman of killing 43-year-old Karen Dalton while the Los Angeles-bound bus was stopped at an Oroville gas station on the night of Feb. 2, 2022.

Dalton, a resident of Seattle, was traveling with her 14-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter, whom Coleman shot twice including once in the face.

Dalton’s family told The Sacramento Bee days after the murder that Dalton suffered multiple wounds in the shooting as she tried to protect her children. She and her two children boarded the Greyhound bus in Spokane, Washington, and were on their way to visit Dalton’s eldest son in New Mexico, before they would continue their trip to Alabama. Her family was moving there, and they decided it would be more affordable to travel by bus.

Three other people suffered gunshot wounds in the bizarre attack that called into question the mental competency of the then-21-year-old, who had been a previous ward of Sacramento juvenile court.

He was also found guilty of four counts of attempted murder — for the shooting of Dalton’s daughter, as well as a 25-year-old pregnant woman, a 32-year-old man and a 38-year-old man — and a slew of enhancements for allegedly using a gun in the commission of the attack.

Coleman was from Sacramento though public records about his time in the city were sparse. He also lived what law enforcement officials described as a “transient lifestyle” in California.

Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said at the time that the victims on the bus described Coleman as acting erratically and “paranoid” from the time he boarded in Redding. At one point, he showed passengers a 9mm handgun he was carrying in a small bag.

Authorities say Coleman, who had been sitting in the back of bus, lunged forward and pulled out a 9mm handgun, brandished it toward passengers and began arguing with a person who he claimed was an undercover cop. Honea said in the hours after the attack that a “significant confrontation” escalated from there and Coleman had fired “somewhere north of 10 shots.”

After opening fire inside the bus parked at an AM-PM convenience store, Coleman fled. Deputies, police and other law enforcement officers took him into custody at a nearby Walmart, where authorities said he had fought with a man and stripped off his clothes.

In a statement, the Butte County District Attorney’s Office said Dalton’s daughter addressed the court during the sentencing phase by video conference, telling the judge that she still has recurring nightmares of Coleman’s attack.

Another victim, Rose Whitley, now 27, had her statement read by a victim’s advocate. Prosecutors said she told of “her constant pain from shrapnel that lodged in her tailbone from the shooting” and how her child was born prematurely.

Bobby Farber, now 34, “spoke from his wheelchair in the courtroom,” the D.A.’s Office said. “He noted he was now permanently paralyzed as a result of the shooting and in constant pain.”

Chief Deputy District Attorney Mark Murphy drew a direct line between Farber’s “courage” and Coleman’s “cowardice,” noting a prosecution expert who determined Coleman suffered from “anti-social personality disorder” and other behavior that was “deeply defective and dangerous.” Murphy said the strictest sentence was urged “to protect the public.”

At the end of the penalty phase, Caraway sentenced Coleman to a minimum of 74 years, 8 months, to life, “noting his previous crimes involving violence and guns both as a juvenile and adult in the Bay Area and Sacramento,” the D.A.’s Office said.

Prosecutors, however, said Coleman could be eligible for parole as early as 2049, when he would be 48, because of California’s Youthful Offender Parole law.

Coleman remained in custody in Butte County Jail pending his admittance to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The Bee’s Rosalio Ahumada contributed to this story.