A southwest suburban woman convicted of murdering her former boyfriend near a grocery store in 2007 was sentenced to 52 years in prison Tuesday.
In March, a Will County jury found 25-year-old Gabriela Escutia guilty of first-degree murder for the Oct. 28, 2007 attack, Will County State’s Attorney’s office spokesman Charles Pelkie said in a statement.
Judge Carla Alessio Policandriotes handed down the 52-year sentence at a hearing Tuesday, the statement said. Escutia faced up to life in prison.
Escutia and her boyfriend Ricardo Gutierrez ambushed 18-year-old Javier Barrios after she had arranged to meet him near a Plainfield Meijer store on Oct. 28, 2007, prosecutors said. An unidentified woman went with them.
Barrios, Escutia’s former boyfriend, was unarmed when she shot him once in the side, piercing his heart, prosecutors said.
She claimed on the witness stand and told police she would have shot him a second time if the gun hadn’t jammed, according to prosecutors.
Gutierrez took the gun and chased Barrios into the nearby field where he collapsed facedown, then shot him twice in the back of the head, prosecutors said.
After the murder, Escutia and Barrios went to see the horror movie “Saw IV,” authorities said.
The defense had argued Escutia suffered from battered women’s syndrome, and that she shot Barrios because she was afraid of him.
Gutierrez was convicted of murder in March 2013 and sentenced to 68 years.
