Faribault man gets over 11 years for fatal assault following road rage incident in 2022
Leslie Shawn Sanders (Credit: Rice County Sheriff's Office)
A little over a month after pleading guilty to a murder charge, a Faribault man was sentenced to over 11 years (140 months) in prison in connection with a fatal assault following a road rage incident. He has credit for 466 days already served.
As previously reported, 53-year-old Leslie Sanders pleaded guilty to second-degree unintentional murder in early September as part of a plea agreement, which in exchange would allow two other charges — first- and third-degree assault — to be dismissed. It also would allow Sanders to serve 140 months (just over 11.5 years) in prison.
The charges were filed following the death of 79-year-old Larry Lynn Myers on July 6, 2022, after being pulled off life support. Myers was injured during a road rage incident in Dundas on June 27. The obituary for Myers says he previously lived in Jackson, Missouri and was a U.S. Air Force Veteran who served in Vietnam.
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According to court records, witnesses at the scene of the alleged assault told Dundas police that Sanders had exited his pickup truck, approached Myers’s SUV and started punching Myers repeatedly in the face.
Myers was said to have corroborated the witnesses’ story. At the scene, Myers told Dundas Police Chief Todd Hanson that the two vehicles were on Cannon City Boulevard when Sanders went to pass Myers’s vehicle and hit Myers’s vehicle when returning to the lane.
It is unclear how events escalated, but records show the assault incident happened later on Highway 3.
Myers was seen bleeding from serious facial injuries and was taken to the hospital in Northfield. Health care providers diagnosed Myers with fractures below his eyes, a fractured nose, lacerations to the forehead and mouth and other wounds. He was later taken to Hennepin County Medical Center, where health officials determined he had a serious brain injury and couldn’t tolerate dialysis or breathe on his own.