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A man accused of murdering a research scientist from Irvine in Malibu Creek State Park was sentenced Tuesday, June 21, to three years and eight months in jail for attacking two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies while he has been in custody.
Jurors had found Anthony Rauda, 45, guilty of two felony counts of battery with injury on a peace officer. The sentence he received Tuesday from Superior Court Judge David Fields amounted to time he has already served behind bars. Rauda remained in jail while awaiting trial on far more serious charges.
He was convicted for an attack on a deputy after a hearing in his murder case at the downtown Los Angeles courthouse, and for an attack on a sheriff’s deputy at the Men’s Central Jail with a shaved-down pencil.
In her closing argument, Deputy District Attorney Antonella Nistorescu told jurors that Rauda became “angry and rageful” over court proceedings, and “he takes it out on deputies.”
Rauda was brought to the downtown Los Angeles courtroom for his sentencing in a chair in which he was confined.
He is awaiting trial separately on a charge that he murdered 35-year-old Allergan scientist Tristan Thomas Beaudette of Irvine, who was shot at about 4:45 a.m. on June 22, 2018, while camping in a tent with his then 2- and 4-year-old daughters; they escaped injury.
He is also facing trial on 10 counts of attempted murder — Beaudette’s daughters are among the named victims — along with five counts of second-degree commercial burglary.
Rauda has a string of convictions for weapons-related offenses dating back to 2006, according to the criminal complaint filed against him in the murder case.
Prosecutors allege that Rauda carried out attacks dating back to November of 2016, when he allegedly wounded a man who was sleeping in a hammock in the Malibu state park area.
He allegedly fired into the sleeping area of a vehicle less than a week later. Rauda is also charged with shooting into vehicles, but not injuring anyone, on three occasions in 2017 and shooting at a Tesla on Las Virgenes Road four days before Beaudette’s killing.
He was arrested in October 2018 after a series of manhunts for a rifle-toting culprit suspected in multiple food heists in the Calabasas area, including an early morning burglary at the Agoura Hills/Calabasas Community Center, where someone smashed a vending machine and stole food.
Rauda was allegedly carrying a rifle when he was arrested in a ravine about a mile and a half north of Mulholland Highway west of Las Virgenes Road in the Malibu Canyon area, after deputies combing the area spotted fresh boot prints and tracked him down.
Authorities say Rauda had been captured on surveillance video in one of the crimes carrying a rifle and wearing what sheriff’s investigators described as “tactical gear.”
In a statement released after Rauda was charged with Beaudette’s slaying, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said evidence had been developed and gathered “incriminating Rauda as being responsible for a series of armed burglaries, multiple shooting incidents, and the murder of Tristan Beaudette.”
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