Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This article contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
A young Texas woman is on the fast track to becoming a police officer, until a nasty fight with her boyfriend ends with him shot dead, and her
holding the gun.
It´s father´s day weekend full of familly gatherings
But just hours before this panick 911 call it was a different kind of f renzy
at a popular rsturant in Galveston Texas
where 27 year old chris chapa and his girlfriend 22 year old claudia esquivel are pulling double shifts
He had gone into work , it was a busy time lots brunches lots of reservations at the resturant.
But chris isn´t just busy on this father´s he´s hearbroken , four years earlier he lost a baby with his then high school sweatheart.
christopher never really recovered from losing his daughter ,it was something that kind of stuck with him and so he went t into work with a very heavy heart ,did his job the best that he could but everyone could tell that he just wasn´t himself and so the managers let him go home early.
chris leaves while his girlfriend claudia remains behind at work Claudia had to stay till closing she wasn´t particularly happy about that
perhaps exhausted after after recently completing the grueling training program at the local police academy in galveston .
Claudia is not a cop yet. But well on her way once she passes the state exams.
It was something actually that christopher was quite proud of, that claudia decided she wanted to be a peace officer ,he was mobing up in his job at the resturant, he had become a supervisor he was doing triaining and so he was exited to see claudia excited about something .
Around 11 pm claudia wraps up her shift at the resturant and heads home to the apartment she shares with chris and tonight she´s got a special suprise for him.
She wanted to start cooking a crab boil , like 11 o´clock at night and he just wanted to kind of ready to get ready for bed and start the next day s, somewhere in that they started to get into an argument.
An argument that chri´s sister says befan earlier that day when chris sent a text to his former high school flame.
father´s day and mother´s day was always hard somethimes for christopher and his high school sweetheart and so they didn´t really keep in touch alot after they broke up but those two days of the year ,they would kind of like connect with each other through message just to kind of check on one another because they would always had that bond.
A bond chri´s sistesr claims claudia didn´t like.
Claudia was controlling , she went monopoplize christopher´s time .”
But tonight chris has plans of his own. while she was at work, christopher j his young brother ,had gotten together, to dinner .
Ruining claudias´ crab suprise and while the meal is left to simmer down on the stove, claudia´s anger is just beginning to boil over.
At some point christopher was done. he started collecting his belonings and was like
“and was like ,this is the final straw.”
Final everything.
At some point she got the gun and she held it to his head and pulled the trigger . it was one shot to the back of his head.and that was it and instead calling 9-1-1 to get help she called her mother
Several crucial minutes will pass before claudia´s mother calls 9-1-1 and she will not mention the shooting or reuest an ambulance.
911 call
operator : ” this is your friend?
claudias mother :” it´s my daughter.
operator:“oh ,your daughter ?”
claudias mother : yes”
operator: yous said her boyfriend´s hittihn her?”
claudias mother: “yeas”
operator: “okay” and he ´s still there?
claudias mother: “yeas”
opertor: do you know if your daughter needs any kind of EMS, uh, treatment?”
claudias mother: ” i dont know”
Detective solenberger is one of the first to arrive on scene and realizes this domestic disturbance call is something else.
Det. solenberger: chris was killed with a single gunshot wounds to the head. the entrance wound was behind his right ear towards the back of the head.
Chris lays bleeding to death with a mortal gunshot wound. And his girlfriend claudia,she´s nowhere to be found.
officers contacted dispatch and dispatch did a little backtracking , contacted her mother her mother then said this is where claudia is. at that point she was in custody .
Claudia is escorted to the county jail by major crimes detective ,Hector dominguez. Jr.
Hector dominguez. Jr.:” she confirmed that she did want to talk about the case, so i took her back to the interview room”
Were video camera records her every words .
Claudia : you´r just gionna like bounce, you´r not even gonna eat dinner with me. i ´m sitting here waiting for you he´s like , ” oh you and your crab, i don´t care . acting all ugly and all that and i was like fine, whatever. i was like … i´m just gonna put it away.
Claudia puts the food away and takes out something else.
A gun.
Claudia:” i grab it to scare him” i´m like chris , i just want you to leave.
Leave or die….
Claudia : ” i did like point it and i was like ” get out”.and i´m like going like this for him to get out of the door .
Claudia : ” and he´s like , “oh your´e gonna shot me, he knows i´m not gonna shoot him. no, i wasn´t gonna shoot you.
But that´s exactly what she did
Claudia clames it´s a case of domestic violence that ended in an accidental shooting , she demonstates the alleged assult to detective dominguehez. when he getting all rough and arms go up and that´s when the shot came out . “because my finger hit the trigger ” claudia says.
But claudia maintained she only meant to intimidate chris not kill him.
detective dominguez:” did you unload it.
claudia: i did.i took out the magazine.i unloaded it and unloaded gun cannot hurt someone,it was supposed to be unloaded, i took the magazine out.unloaded gun can´t hurt people.
But sadly it wasn´t unloaded
While claudia tells her side at Galveston police headquarters, investigators are collecting evidence at the crime scene. which tells a very different tale.
Claudia claims it was an accidental shooting.Investigators point to evidence of cold blooded murder.
She wanted to be a police officer, even attended a law enforcement adacemy ,but in an instant all that would change for claudia Esquivel an argument with her boyfriend ends in gunfire and now he´s dead .
Claudia claims chris death was an accident during a lover´s spat. but prosecutors conted she should have known better ,she was recent graduate of the police academy and if it was an accident , why was chris shot in the back of the head ?
Police cadet claudia esquivel shoots her boyfriend chris chapa to death but she claims it was an accidental shooting.
While claudia is interrogated by police,investigators at the crime scene collect evidence.
and it points to cold and calculated murder….
Det. sollenberger: The evidence just didn´t fit the pieces with her saying” he was refusing to leave” she was trying to scare him into leaving,the evidence shows that he was fully dressed ,his stuff was packed by the door and it looked like he was leaving just maybe not fast enough for her .
And that alleged domestic violence ,cops report no signs of struggle or any defensive marks on claudia´s body .
Det. sollenberger: There was no reported history of domestic violence with the policedepartement. we found no evidence that they had ever call the police on one another.
But they learn about a prior physical incident between the couple and the aggressor wasn´t chris.
One particular incident that detectives learned about after the fact claudia had acctually tazed chris subsequent to an argument.
and what about claudia´s claim she didn´t know there was a bullet in the chamber .
Not to mention this shocking fact.claudia scored at the top of her firearms class at the police academy.
But was it ab accudebtak shooting ir murder,whether she intended to pull the trigger and put a bullet trough his head that night .she ´s the only one that knows that .
Chris and claudia weren´t alone in the apartment the night of the shooting . there someone else and not only did he see what happened he was in the range of fire.
Police uncover an eyewitness to the shooting and it´s shocker.
The eyewitness is claudia´s own four- year-old son and cops want him to tell them if it was an accident or cold -blooded murder.
27 year old chris chaba is shot dead . the shooter his 22 year old girlfriend claudia Esquivel- a police cadet, she swears it was an accident .
Cops suspect it was murder.
But there was a third perseon in the room that deadly night. a eyewitnesss to the shooting who´s about to crack this case wide open.
Det. sollenberger : we know that from the interview with her son that he did wsitness this.
that´s right , claudia has a son a four year old little boy, who was in the apartement during the time of the shooting. and sadly he had a front row seat to the horrific violence
The four- year -old´s interview with a child forensic interviewer.
The boy draws a picture ,a worth thousand words according to detective sollenberger
In the photo he described the face as being chris .he described this as being a gun and bleed on the floor.
Claudia´s son begins coloring outside the lines. he was giving a coloring sheet but he scribbled the drawing, the part that detectives would anticipated him coloring.
and he drew a face here with a gun and these scribbles he described as bleed on the floor.
According to cops the boy describing chris´s bloodstained t-shirt marked with his mother´s bloody palm print, seen here in this police evidence photo
It´s a detail only an eyewitness to the shooting would know
boy :“chris died.
child forensic: okay.
boy: he ain´t breathe
child forensic: okay.
boy : chris need to go to doctor.
child forensic: he needs to go to the doctor?
boy: chris died. he died , he can´t get up.
The words of claudia´s own son point to his mom as the killer .
Claudia faces five years to life in prison for felony murder ,following closing arguments jurors took just over six hours to return with the verdict.
Beverly armstrong:she was convicted uh…sentenced to 27 years in the prison system.
And up for parole in 13 and a half years ,but not if chris´s family can help it.
for every day that she tries to convince someone that it wasn´t her fault even though she had the training and knowledge of how to deal with a handgun , my family will be there to tell her “no”. and we will be there every step of the way to say ” you will not get out of jail “
But no matter how much time is served , the punishment is endless fot both families .
Two lifes forever ruined over a petty fight when the reality was.. he wanted to marry her .chris had planned to propose to claudia but instead of planning a wedding,
one family plans a funural
and the other prison visits.
Claudias son now lives with her mother ,claudia will not be eligible for parole until at least about 13 and a half years of her sentence has been served .