Man who shot 20-year-old dead at Rancho Cordova house party gets maximum sentence

Members of Corey Shearer’s family described the 20-year-old Amador County man as loving, kind soul who went out one night four years ago to a Rancho Cordova house party and was shot four times.

At a sentencing hearing Friday for the man convicted of killing Shearer, the victim’s family said the young man bled out in the front lawn of that Rancho Cordova home over a dispute after someone bumped someone else in a crowded room at that party.

Crystal Shearer, the murder victim’s mother, told a judge that she doesn’t have the words to describe the amount of pain she and her family has suffered since the deadly shooting. She said she aches knowing she wasn’t there to protect or comfort her son in the final moments of his life.

“There are simply no words strong enough,” she said Friday morning in court. “I want to scream with my entire soul every single day.”

Amyis Ausar Coogler, 21, was sentenced to 40 years to life in prison for Shearer’s shooting death. Sacramento Superior Court Judge Ernest Sawtelle handed Coogler the maximum sentence, which included a gun enhancement that more than doubled the amount of time Coogler will have to spend in prison before he can become eligible for parole.

The judge said evidence proving Coogler’s guilt was “overwhelming” in his trial. In March, a jury found Coogler guilty of second-degree murder for the shooting that killed Shearer.

Jolene Self, Corey’s aunt, said Coogler took away her nephew’s life over “a brief accidental bump in a crowded room.” She said her nephew will never have a chance to be a father and experience everything else there is in life.

“We all loved him fiercely,” Self told the judge. “He made people loved, no matter what.”

Jessica Jordan, another of Shearer’s aunts, said images of the crime scene still disturb her, but those aren’t the images of who her nephew was or his life, which was one filled with promise.

As a nurse at a hospital, Jordan said she struggles every time a trauma patient or gunshot victim is wheeled into the emergency room. It reminds her what happened to her nephew.

“That pain never leaves me,” Jordan told the judge. “I have watched grief consume the people who loved Corey the most.”

Shearer had been working for about a year as a janitor at Harrah’s Casino in Ione, where his mother also worked the overnight shift. Before the shooting, Ricky Shearer said his son had recently started a landscaping company and had already gained regular customers.

Shearer of Ione and his three younger sisters grew up in Amador County, where he played football at Amador High School and later at Argonaut High. His girlfriend accompanied him that night to the party held at the Ramsgate Way home.

DNA evidence

The deadly shooting occurred about 11:20 p.m. Aug. 5, 2022, at the home in the 3000 block of Ramsgate Way, just east of Mather Field Road in Rancho Cordova, according to the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office.

Deputies who responded to the reported shooting found Shearer with four gunshot wounds on the lawn. Shearer was taken to a hospital, where he died from his injuries.

Even though there were 75 to 100 young people at the Rancho Cordova house party, sheriff’s detectives received little information from many of those in attendance and no suspects had been arrested five months after the fatal shooting.

At a 2023 news conference, the Sheriff’s Office released an image of a person of interest sought in the case. When Coogler’s arrest was announced a little more than a year later, sheriff’s officials said the image came from security camera video that showed Coogler jumping into a nearby backyard.

The video of Coogler in the neighbor’s backyard was captured shortly after the shooting, according to the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office.

Witnesses ultimately told detectives they saw a suspect pull a handgun out of his waistband “and shoot Shearer several times” before running away, sheriff’s officials said previously. Detectives found a 9 mm handgun near where Shearer was shot.

Prosecutors said witnesses gave investigators a description of the shooting suspect. Investigators collected traces of DNA that matched Coogler, including the gun that was used in the fatal shooting.

New trial motion

At Friday’s hearing, Keith Staten, Coogler’s defense attorney, asked the judge for a new trial for his client. Staten argued that a judge filling in for Sawtelle, who was absent one day during the jury’s deliberations, gave an improper instruction to the jurors that confused them as they struggled to reach a unanimous verdict in the trial.

Staten said the jurors informed the court that day that they were hung, but the substitute judge gave them an improper instruction to give it another try and continue their deliberations. The defense attorney argued that the jury, which could not reach a verdict on first-degree or second-degree murder and a lesser manslaughter charge, went back into deliberations and “compromised” with the second-degree verdict.

Sawtelle rejected the defense motion for a new trial. He said the substitute judge gave the proper jury instruction, which was not coercive or a misstatement of the law.

Staten also asked the judge to either drop the gun enhancement or reduce it, saying there were mitigating factors that the court should not ignore. The defense attorney said his age at the time of the shooting should be considered along with his troubled childhood.

“His father was in prison for most of (Coogler’s) life,” Staten told the judge. “His mother did the best she could.”

Coogler, who was 17 at the time of the shooting, played varsity football in 2021 for Capital Christian High School in Rosemont — now known as Destiny Christian Academy — and had been set to graduate in 2023, according to his profile on high school sports website MaxPreps.

House party confrontation

Staten argued that nobody at the house party said Coogler had been creating problems before the shooting, and there was a racial disparity with only about six Black people, including Coogler, among over 100 people ages 12 to 20 at the party. He also said police had been at the party earlier that night and didn’t stop it, only telling partygoers to go inside the house before the shooting occurred later.

The defense attorney described Shearer as “the main aggressor” in the confrontation and said his client was responding to “intimidation” after the large crowd of people went out onto the front lawn to watch the fight.

“That is not callousness,” Staten told the judge. “This is not a case where person just walks up and shoots.”

Deputy District Attorney Celeena Winston, who prosecuted Coogler, said the defense attorney’s argument was a misstatement of the facts in the murder trial in an attempt to disregard the jury’s verdict. She said Shearer was not the aggressor and that Coogler has been convicted of using a gun in a serious offense.

“He shot him four times,” Winston argued. “And he fled the scene of the crime.”

Sawtelle refused to drop or reduce the gun enhancement. The judge said Coogler made the decision to bring a gun to house party. When a bump inside the home led to a confrontation outside, Coogler then used “a gun in a fist-fight,” the judge said.

He also pointed out that Coogler, in the time investigators were still searching for a suspect, was charged in five other criminal cases in Northern California. Sawtelle said Coogler also has been punished while awaiting trial in jail for being involved in assaults on other inmates.

“That tells me that you are violent,” Sawtelle told Coogler.

“I don’t know if you will be violent forever, but you are violent right now.”

This story was originally published May 8, 2026 at 2:50 PM.

Rosalio Ahumada

The Sacramento Bee

916-326-5549

Rosalio Ahumada writes breaking news stories related to crime and public safety for The Sacramento Bee. He speaks Spanish fluently and has worked as a news reporter in the Central Valley since 2004.