After seven hours of deliberations over two days, a jury on Feb. 28 found a Pacific Beach man guilty of second-degree murder at Campland On The Bay after he angrily left a hot tub and returned with a gun.
The jury filed into the courtroom at 4:20 p.m., looking solemn and determined Michael Lawrence Callahan, 40, killed Ryan Abbott, 49, also of Pacific Beach. Callahan’s only reaction was to take off his glasses.
The nine-man, three-woman jury also found that Callahan personally used a firearm when he shot Abbott on May 16, 2023, minutes after he argued with him and another woman at the hot tub.
San Diego Superior Court Judge Lisa Rodriguez set sentencing for April 22. Callahan remains in jail without bail.
The penalty for second-degree murder is a mandatory term of 15 years to life in prison.
“You worked very hard,” said Rodriguez to the jury. “We appreciate your service.”
“It’s a good verdict. It’s fair,” said Deputy District Attorney Jessica Sutterley to a reporter afterward.
Sutterley had asked for a first-degree murder conviction, and jurors acquitted him of that offense.
His attorney, Samantha Greene, suggested either an acquittal or a verdict of voluntary manslaughter in her closing argument, saying manslaughter would reflect an action after a sudden quarrel or a rash act. She asked jurors to reject first and second-degree murder, saying Callahan was intoxicated.
Callahan testified that a woman in the hot tub gave him “magic mushrooms” concealed in chocolates without telling him beforehand. Greene said “he hated the effects” it had on his body before the shooting.
“I gave him mushrooms. I wonder if that’s why he became unhinged,” said the woman to police after the shooting, according to Greene in her closing argument.
The woman was produced as a witness in the one-week trial, and she denied giving Callahan mushrooms on that day.
The prosecutor said Callahan was angered because an intoxicated woman he was flirting with at the hot tub left the park after a friend picked her up. One woman criticized him for hitting on the other woman.
Sutterley argued that Callahan received the hallucinogenic mushrooms from “a lady he just met” and “that is the consequence of partying.”
“He was perceiving danger…that his life was in danger,” argued Greene.
Security cameras showed Callahan quickly leaving the hot tub. He walked to his trailer and got a gun.
“They insulted him. They laughed at him. He’s angry,” argued Sutterley. “He’s stomping back to his trailer. He showed these guys who they’re messing with.”
He fired one shot about 50 feet from the hot tub into a planter. This caused Abbott to get out of the hot tub, telling the woman he would try to calm Callahan down.
Callahan’s lawyer showed an enlarged computer screen titled “Inside Mr. Callahan’s Head” and told jurors “Ryan Abbott was gaining on him.”
Greene said Callahan knew he had to go to work the next day and denied he had any plan to kill Abbott. She described him as “a functioning marijuana smoker.”
Greene said Callahan handed the gun to a maintenance worker, telling her, “I just shot someone. I didn’t want to do it. It was self-defense.”
“These are not the actions of a murderer,” said Greene, adding that afterwards he took his dogs on a walk, knowing he would probably be arrested soon.
The prosecutor told jurors “he deliberately acted with disregard for human life,” which is an element defining second-degree murder.
Sutterley said: “He is not entitled to self-defense. Ladies and gentlemen, this is murder. He did it.”