A man who fatally shot a stranger during a rapidly escalating row about the volume of their competing car stereos will serve a life sentence, a judge ruled Tuesday.
Devin Rose was out of custody and awaiting sentencing on an earlier shooting when he rolled up to the Dotty’s lottery bar at the Highland Fair strip mall in Gresham on the evening of Oct. 7, 2023.
Rose, 32, got into an argument in the parking lot about the stereos and then fired 15 rounds at Justin Graver as the 42-year-old dove into his sedan for cover. Graver, who was unarmed, died at the scene.
In a statement provided to the court, Graver’s mother, Sandra Graver, said the loss has not only left her wracked with grief but her son’s children, sisters and significant other as well.
“Hours, days, weeks and months and years have been stolen away from my family,” Sandra Graver said. “I am not sure I will ever be coming back to who I was before this.”
Justin Graver is shown here in an undated photo.Gresham Police Department
Two years before Rose shot Justin Graver, he had opened fire at a group of out-of-town road workers gathered outside a Gresham motel in September 2021, wounding a stranger in the torso, court records show. He pleaded guilty to second-degree assault and was facing a sentence of five years and 10 months in prison when he killed Graver.
Defense attorney Tristen Edwards argued that the two sentences should be served at the same time, citing Rose’s troubled childhood in foster care, post-traumatic stress and cocaine addiction as reasons why Rose perceived Graver as a threat.
Multnomah County Circuit Judge Christopher Ramras denied the request, saying Rose should have known better than to bring a gun to the parking lot, a popular nighttime hangout. He imposed the two sentences concurrently, meaning Rose will first be eligible for parole in nearly 31 years.
Rose stood up and apologized to the Graver family at the hearing’s end.
“I feel like anything that I have to say is irrelevant; it’s not going to bring Justin back,” he said. “He had nothing to do with any of that stuff that I had been through.”
—Zane Sparling covers breaking news and courts for The Oregonian/OregonLive. Reach him at 503-319-7083, [email protected] or @pdxzane.
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