Elderly Eureka resident David Alan Kobak has been sentenced to two life terms in state prison for the August 2017 murder of his longtime buddy Frederick William Loftus.

This morning Judge Gregory Elvine Kreis sentenced the 77-year-old Kobak to 15 years to life for second-degree murder and 25 years to life for personally discharging a firearm causing death or injury. Loftus, 59, was shot eight times with a semiautomatic rifle.

Several of Loftus’s family members, including two daughters and a sister, made statements expressing their grief and anger over losing their loved one. Kobak listened silently, looking down at his lap.

“(Loftus) talked about this man Kobak,” Loftus’s sister Jacqueline Dahl said. “He said he met Kobak when he was young.” When she heard about the fatal shooting, “I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it  … for him to take him out so viciously, to shoot him so many times.”

Loftus’s daughter, Crystal Loftus, said she will never forget receiving the phone call informing her Kobak had shot her father to death. At first she thought it must have been an accident.

But as the days went on, her sorrow, anger and confusion grew. She imagines her beloved father “lying in a pool of his own blood, abandoned by his best friend.”

During Kobak’s jury trial, jurors watched a video of Kobak’s interview with Eureka police Detective Ron Harpham, with Kobak saying he and Loftus were arguing and Loftus walked into the kitchen and struck him two or three times in the face. But his face showed no sign of injury.

“I can’t imagine a physical altercation occurred,” Crystal Loftus said.

She is not only dealing with her own grief but that of her 11-year-old son, who cries over losing his Papa.

“David has taken away so much more than my father’s life,” she said.

At the end of her statement, Crystal read a prayer, with others in the audience praying aloud with her:


Dear Lord,

I pray to You today to show no mercy.
Do not purge this man of his sins or cleanse him of his bloodshed.
I pray for You to tear out the fangs of this old lion, my lord.
Let him vanish like water flowing away.
Trodden down, let him wither like grass.
Let him dissolve like ashes in the wind.
Like an untimely birth that never sees the sun.
Suddenly, like brambles or thistles, let the whirlwind snatch his soul away.

Amen.


Another daughter, Amanda Reeves, looked over at Kobak and said, quietly, “I’m angry at you, David, for what you did.”

Loftus and Kobak were friends for 30 years, both commercial fishermen who often worked on the same boat. Loftus had been staying with Kobak in his Eureka apartment, and the shooting occurred after a day of drinking.

Kobak told Harpham Loftus hit him and insulted him, though he wouldn’t explain what Loftus said that made him angry enough to pick up a rifle and open fire. It was Kobak who called 911, saying “I shot my buddy.”

During the trial, Kobak took the stand to say he remembered neither the shooting nor his conversation with the detective.

Before Elvine Kreis imposed sentence, he denied two motions filed by Deputy Public Defender Casey Russo. One asked for a new trial or the reduction of charges, the other requested the judge dismiss the special firearms allegation that added a second life term.

“The ultimate question for the court is did the People prove second-degree murder beyond all reasonable doubt,” Russo argued. He said the facts as presented could have reasonably resulted in a verdict of voluntary manslaughter.

The prosecution offered a worst-case version of what happened, Russo said, “but it’s not the only reasonable version.”

Much of the district attorney’s case was based on Kobak’s statements after the shooting. Russo said Kobak, then 75, was in a confused state of mind during the interview.

Kobak must have been seriously provoked, Russo said, because “it’s highly unlikely he would shoot his friend of 30 years over a petty argument.”

The shooting, he said, occurred “during a sudden quarrel in the confines of my client’s small apartment. It escalated very quickly; it was started by Mr. Loftus and there was considerable provocation.”

Deputy District Attorney Whitney Timm, the trial prosecutor, responded that Russo’s scenario “is simply not supported by the facts.”

Timm said there was no evidence of a physical altercation, and a reasonable person would not have done what Kobak did.

“It was clear that the jury considered all these things,” she said.

Elvine Kreis, in denying the motion to dismiss the firearms allegation, said if there had been no gun, Loftus would still be alive.

“We have an individual who’s not with us anymore,” the judge said, “and the gun is the reason.”

As to the request to reduce the murder charge to voluntary manslaughter, Elvine Kreis said the prosecution presented enough evidence to justify the jury’s verdict.

“I’m not going to get in the way and reverse what the jury spent many hours going over,” he said.

Regarding the video of the police interview, the judge said Kobak seemed to be “just as confused as everybody else seems to be about what caused this to happen.”

He also said the question of “Why?” will never be answered.

After imposing sentence, Elvine Kreis spoke to Kobak.

“I know this is not how either one of you in this case wanted to end your life. But best of luck to you.”

Kobak was given credit for 918 days served.

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