OAKLAND — It has been 12 years since 44-year-old Bowin David pinned a motorcyclist between his Honda and another passing vehicle on the west side of the Caldecott Tunnel, only to be shot by an off-duty California Highway Patrol officer on the east side of the tunnel.

Now, the criminal case has finally ended.

After a jury trial this year where he was convicted of aggravated mayhem and attempted murder, David was sentenced to an eight-year prison term, plus a prison term of seven years to life. He gets credit for the more than 4,000 days he spent confined — both in jail and at a state mental hospital — while the case was pending, court records show.

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The case stems from a road rage incident on Aug. 16, 2013, when the motorcyclist allegedly made a hand gesture at David on Highway 24 in Oakland, which prosecutors say was an attempt to urge David to be more careful after a close call. David wrote in court filings that it was a gun-like, threatening gesture, and David’s lawyer argued that in David’s extreme “paranoia,” he interpreted it as an ongoing threat.

Either way, as the motorcycle passed, David maneuvered his Honda to pinch the motorcycle between his own car and another vehicle in an adjacent lane, then drove through the tunnel and parked on Wilder Road in Orinda. It was there that off-duty CHP Officer Adam Lightfoot found him. David allegedly went for a knife in his pocket and charged at the officer, who fired three times, striking David once, according to court records.

The motorcyclist was paralyzed from his belly button down, prosecutors said in court filings. The man continues to suffer to this day, living his life for many years in a hospital bed, with the goal of someday moving to a wheelchair, according to letters filed in court by his daughters.

“Bowin David didn’t only almost kill my dad that afternoon. He’s almost succeeded in killing my dad every single month of every single year since that day,” the victim’s eldest daughter wrote. “Paralysis is a horrible fate and not walking is only the tip of a very big, very deep iceberg of pain and suffering.”

Another letter, written by the victim’s son-in-law, argued for the “maximum” penalty.

“Before the incident, my father-in-law was an active, independent man, someone who took pride in doing things for himself and never relied on anyone else for help,” the son-in-law wrote. “Today, he must ask for assistance with even the most basic tasks … What happened to him is not just an accident, it was an intentional act that robbed him of his independence, his mobility and his quality of life.”

After being shot by Lightfoot, David was briefly hospitalized, then sent to jail. In 2015, he was forcibly taken to the Napa State Hospital until doctors deemed him mentally competent for trial, court records show. This year, his lawyer argued that David — a Navy veteran who had a Concord address but was living out of his vehicle at the time — was severely mentally ill and that his “bizarre” actions that day confirm he was full or “rampant paranoia.”

“Mr. David held the persecutory delusions that the victim was part of a gang that was out to kill him,” defense lawyer Todd Bequette wrote in court filings, referring to a doctor’s conclusions about David. “Based on an innocuous hand gesture on the part of the victim, Mr. David believed that he was indicating his intent to kill him … The fact that the defendant believed that he’d been recently illegally drugged would be offered for the same purpose, as would his bizarre interpretation of the victim’s hand gestures.”

David is in North Kern State Prison, records show. Before being transferred there, he penned a series of handwritten legal filings from his Santa Rita Jail cell. In them, he blamed the entire justice system for “conspiracy” to cover up the true crimes against him, accusing the CHP of covering up the truth about the shooting, and doubling down on the idea that his victim posed a threat.

He wrote that he woke up in Alameda County that morning and found evidence someone broke into his hotel room, then removed military decals from his vehicle “just in case the strangers who persistently follow me around and who trespassed my living quarters tried to identify my car.”

One of David’s letters is entitled “Dying Declaration.”

“I will provide my defense as an innocent victim,” he wrote.