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A Richmond man whose paranoia about getting shot led him to open fire on a car he didn't know was filled with friends — killing one and permanently debilitating another — was sentenced to 36 years to life in prison Thursday.

The sentencing hearing of 25-year-old Aaron Kalip Myers started with the mother of slain Richmond resident Rhonda White lunging at Myers' girlfriend as she entered the courtroom with three of Myers' children.

"She came at me with my baby in my arms," Tiana Sheppard told bailiffs who escorted her to the courthouse parking lot after sentencing.

Sheppard drove the car from which Myers and a second man fired at White's car on April 3, 2008, as White, 25, and four friends drove on Interstate 80 in Pinole, on their way to a bowling alley. White was killed and her boyfriend of five years, Donald Ray Allison, was wounded.

Pregnant at the time, Sheppard made a deal with prosecutors and pleaded to being an accessory after the fact in exchange for a year in jail.

Myers was convicted in May of voluntary manslaughter, four counts of attempted voluntary manslaughter and shooting a handgun into an occupied vehicle.

The verdict indicated jurors believed Myers' testimony. He testified that he had recently fled the Parchester Village neighborhood in fear of his life after being shot himself. He didn't recognize White's car or its occupants, and interpreted the victims' friendly waves as a precursor to gunfire toward him.

When Myers started shooting, his back-seat passenger, Brian Young, followed suit with an AK-47 that delivered the fatal shots, according to evidence presented at trial. Young is expected to go to trial next year.

White was a hardworking bank employee who had largely managed to avoid participation in the crime and violence that plagues Richmond's Parchester Village, where she befriended Myers at a young age.

"I want everyone in court to know how much I love my daughter and how much I miss her," Rhonda White, father, Ronald White, said at the sentencing.

Proponents of a first-degree murder conviction, his family believes Myers hasn't taken responsibility for the killing. "What (Myers) did was wrong. Rhonda never did anything to anyone. Rhonda never hurt anyone."

Aaron Myers addressed the courtroom before he was sentenced, reiterating that it was the second shooter's gunfire that killed White. "I didn't kill her," he said. "I know what really happened, and I know she would forgive me because she'd know I didn't do it on purpose."