Man sentenced to eight years in prison for attempted murder

Apr. 30—A Yuba City man was sentenced to eight years in state prison after he pleaded no contest to attempted murder.

Jeffrey Charles Comer, 47, was arrested in October 2020 after he shot Ricky Lee Reynolds, 39, with a .22 caliber rifle in the river bottoms area near Shanghai Bend. He was located three days after the shooting. During an attempt to apprehend Comer, deputies from the Sutter County Sheriff's Office Special Enforcement Detail fired their weapons. Comer suffered non-life threatening gunshot wounds.

Reynolds will be paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life, suffers from brain damage and has significant memory loss.

Comer appeared in Sutter County Superior Court on Friday for his sentencing. Judge Susan Green asked Deputy District Attorney Cameron King to put on the record why a stipulated plea agreement was reached between the two sides.

King said there was a problem of proof in the case. Reynolds has no memory of the shooting and the other witness of the shooting proved unreliable. Comer had originally been charged with attempted murder, aggravated mayhem, assault with a firearm, being a prohibited person in possession of a firearm, and attempted threat to commit a crime.

A victim services staff member read victim impact statements from Reynolds' niece Araceli Rivera and his brother Michael Reynolds. Vanessa Rivera, Reynolds' niece, and Crystal Marquez, his sister, were in court on Friday and made statements.

"My uncle will never get to enjoy the little pleasures of life," Vanessa Rivera said.

Marquez said Reynolds has been in the hospital for seven months and was in a coma for a week after the shooting. She said he can't hold a conversation and his children haven't been able to see him.

"His life has been forever changed," Marquez said.

In all four statements, Reynolds' family members said Comer deserved more than eight years in prison.

"Jeffrey is an evil human being," the victim services staff member read from Michael Reynolds' statement.

Comer was also sentenced to 16 months in prison for a violation of probation, which will be served concurrently with his eight-year sentence. He will have to serve at least 85 percent of his sentence before being able to apply for parole.