Anthony Landry Claimed Self-Defense
Landry fled the scene after the shooting. On May 8, while he was at large, he was charged with murder. Two days later, he turned himself in. After Landry’s arrest, his attorney said his client had acted in self-defense.
At the trial in December 2025, his attorney told the court that after being pushed, Landry retrieved his gun before returning to the restaurant to get his wallet. According to this version of events, Limmer had lunged at him, and Landry shot the attorney in response.
Daniel J. Flannery, director of the Begun Center for Violence Prevention Research and Education and a professor at Case Western Reserve University, believes rage likely pushed Landry to kill. He tells A&E Crime + Investigation that the number of shots "suggests this heightened sense of anger in the moment."
Dustin Pardini, a professor at Arizona State University’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, says Landry going to his truck for his gun wouldn't necessarily be enough time for him to calm down. "To me, there was no real cooling-off period. This guy was mad," he tells A&E Crime + Investigation. "Even though he went and got the gun, he was still extremely angry and may not have been making decisions that he would have normally made if he wasn't in that angry, agitated state."
Flannery also points out that easy access to a weapon contributed to this dispute becoming a fatal incident of gun violence. "More access and more availability mean more opportunities for use," he says.
How Did Anthony Landry Become Angry Enough to Kill?
Dr. Shayne Jones, a professor at the School of Criminal Justice & Criminology at Texas State University, also believes anger motivated Landry's deadly actions. "I think when the attorney confronted him, he felt like this guy was getting in his way, and he felt the need to retaliate," he tells A&E Crime + Investigation. "In general, if someone feels slighted or like someone has done them wrong, they may react aggressively quite quickly."
Jones does find it unusual that Landry's criminal history contained no violent charges until 2024. Prior to the McDonald's shooting, he'd been accused of striking a family member with a cane on February 17, 2024. Otherwise, his convictions include forgery, bank fraud and possession of a controlled substance.
However, he adds that a history of aggression can take different forms: "Maybe he was aggressive in other ways, just not physically."
"Criminal history is only the tip of the iceberg," Pardini says. "We know from research that a large portion of criminal offending and aggression and anger and irritability and violence, things that are all pertinent to this case, go undetected."
A Swift Verdict, Followed by a Life Sentence
On December 10, 2025, the jury took only 20 minutes to deliver a verdict finding Landry guilty of murder. Jones, whose research interests include legal decision-making among jurors, says, "When the verdict is reached very quickly, that tells us that the jurors see the evidence as very clear."
Before the jury decided on a sentence, friends and family shared victim impact statements about Limmer, relating stories such as his donating bone marrow to his brother with cancer. On the defense side, no one testified about potentially mitigating facts, like mental health issues, for Landry.
In Texas, people convicted of murder must serve between five to 99 years or life in prison, but due to Landry's previous felony conviction, he faced a minimum of 15 years. Despite Landry's defense attorney requesting a 15-year-sentence, on December 11, the jury gave Landry, then 59, life in prison. He will need to serve 30 years before becoming eligible for parole.
Yet no verdict could change the senselessness of this violent act. As Flannery says, "No one would expect being upset about a McDonald's order to end in an incident of gun violence that killed a bystander who just tried to intervene."
