Sacramento County judge sentences man in liquor store shooting that paralyzed victim

A Sacramento Superior Court judge sentenced a man to 22 years in prison for a shooting at a liquor store that wounded a woman who survived her injuries but was paralyzed from the waist down, prosecutors said.

Judge Kevin McCormick on Friday sentenced Emmanuel Pacheco, 23, for the October 2020 shooting, the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office announced in a news release. Pacheco has a previous robbery conviction considered a strike under the state’s “Three Strikes” law.

A jury on March 23, 2022, found Pacheco guilty of assault with a semi-automatic firearm and being a felon in possession of a gun. The conviction includes enhancements that he used a gun in the crime, along with aggravating factors that Pacheco engaged in violent conduct that indicates a serious danger to society, the crime involved great violence, great bodily harm, threat of great bodily harm, or other acts disclosing a high degree of “cruelty, viciousness, or callousness,” according to the news release.

On Oct. 4, 2020, Sacramento County sheriff’s deputies responded to reports of shots fired at a liquor store on Fulton Avenue. The deputies arrived and found the victim in front of the liquor store with a gunshot wound.

A witness described a van that sped away from the scene after the shots were fired. Dispatchers radioed information about the shooting to deputies, along with a description of the van.

A deputy spotted the van and pulled over the vehicle along the eastbound lanes of Highway 50 near Bradshaw Road near Rancho Cordova. Prosecutors said Pacheco jumped out of the van as soon as the vehicle came to a stop.

Pacheco hopped over a freeway railing, but a California Highway Patrol helicopter helped deputies keep Pacheco in sight until he was taken into custody, according to the District Attorney’s Office.

Prosecutors said deputies found an unregistered 9mm Glock 17 gun with an extended ammunition magazine along Pacheco’s path as he fled. Multiple witnesses identified Pacheco as the shooter.

The district attorney’s crime lab confirmed the presence of gunshot residue on Pacheco, and ballistics testing confirmed that all 27 shell casings found at the crime scene were from the Glock that was recovered, prosecutors said.