An ex-Chicago police officer will spend about a week in prison after pleading guilty to fatally shooting her husband, a fellow cop, over three years ago.
Fighting through tears, Jacqueline Villasenor told Judge Arthur Wesley Willis Tuesday, “There is no punishment worse than the punishment I give myself every day.”
“Although the kids love and support me, I still see him in them every day, which makes it hard to know he’s not here,” Jacqueline Villasenor said before she was taken into custody. “We miss him every day.”
Under a plea deal accepted Tuesday, Jacqueline Villasenor agreed to a sentence of more than six years. However, with Illinois’ day-for-day sentencing law and credit for the years she spent on electronic monitoring awaiting trial, Jacqueline Villasenor is expected to serve about seven days in the Illinois Department of Corrections, plus a year of supervised release, according to her attorney.
On Nov. 2, 2021, Jacqueline Villasenor and her husband, fellow Chicago police officer German Villasenor, were inside their Northwest Side home, arguing over a previous affair she’d had, when she pulled out her gun and threatened to kill herself, according to prosecutors. While struggling over the weapon, it fired, striking German Villasenor in his chest. Their then-16-year-old son heard the gunshot and went to his parents’ bedroom, where he found his father lying on his back and his mother performing CPR, prosecutors said.
Jacqueline Villasenor was charged with involuntary manslaughter. She resigned from the Chicago Police Department in December 2022.
“She admitted that what she did was, in fact, a crime,” her attorney Tim Grace said Tuesday. “It’s a very triable case, but she didn’t want to do that. She wanted to accept responsibility. She didn’t want to put her family through it.”
In statements submitted to the court earlier this year, the couple’s son and daughter asked the judge not to sentence their mother to time in prison for what they saw as an unfortunate accident.
“I don’t want to lose both my parents,” the son wrote in a statement. Two of German Villasenor’s siblings also wrote letters in support of Jacqueline Villasenor, asking that the children not suffer any further by having their mother taken away.
“They have given the hardest gift of all. …They’ve given forgiveness,” Grace, her attorney, said in court Tuesday.
German Villasenor’s parents, on the other hand, called for Jacqueline Villasenor to be punished, claiming this incident was no accident.
“My son protected the city he loved so much from criminals like the one who shot him in cold blood,” his mother Leticia Gonzalez said in a statement read before the judge Tuesday. “The woman that sits before you today, asking for leniency, Jacqueline, is the person who murdered my son.”
Advocates speaking on behalf of German Villasenor’s parents, who appeared only on Zoom, alleged Jacqueline Villasenor had been given special treatment.
“She committed a crime, but the sentence doesn’t fit the crime,” Pastor Julie Contreras told reporters after court.
While German Villasenor’s parents did not fully agree with the deal reached, his ailing father was relieved that he was alive to “see justice for his son,” according to Contreras. “In all honesty — their pain and suffering — they want to move forward, to be able to in some way unite their family, because their family has been separated by this,” Contreras said.