Related article: Man gets 17 years for shooting Minn. cop
By Christine Dempsey
The Hartford Courant
HARTFORD, Conn. — A Glastonbury police officer on Tuesday told a judge in Superior Court in Hartford that a plea deal for the man who shot him two years ago is “kind of a slap in the face.”
Minutes later, Judge David Gold sentenced Candido Camacho to 15 years in prison, telling him “you deserve every day” of it. The full sentence is 25 years, suspended after 15, followed by five years of probation.
Officer Nathan Saucier suffered from what was described as a “grazing” type of wound, although prosecutor Sandra Tullius said he still has bullet fragments in his right arm.
Camacho, now 43, was living in Hartford when he was arrested in 2006.
He pleaded guilty May 21 to first-degree assault and third-degree burglary, a charge that stems from a convenience store break-in he committed shortly before he shot Saucier. His plea on the assault charge was under the Alford doctrine, which means he does not admit guilt, but concedes the state has enough evidence to convict him in a trial.
Saucier briefly described his emotions during the early morning struggle with Camacho on June 25, 2006. Camacho is bigger and, at the time of the confrontation, was stronger than Saucier.
Saucier told the court he went into “survival mode.” He wondered if he would die, he said, asking himself, “Is this it?”
“By the grace of God, I’m still here,” Saucier said. “A deal is kind of a slap in the face.”
Tullius said in court that Judge Thomas Miano crafted the plea deal, although courthouse sources said different judges and prosecutors worked on it at different times.
According to the police report, Camacho had started the weekend of the shooting getting high with Elizabeth Arbour, a woman he had just met. Early on the morning of June 25 he took her to the Glastonbury Citgo at 592 Hebron Ave., broke in, and came out with a tray containing cartons of cigarettes while she waited in the car, it says.
When he left the convenience store, Camacho drove west in an eastbound lane of Hebron Avenue, otherwise known as Route 94, the report says. That caught the attention of Saucier, who was on routine patrol and didn’t know about the burglary that had just occurred.
Saucier turned his patrol car around and followed the car, which made abrupt turns before hitting a wire-rope guardrail near Route 2, the report states.
Camacho, who was unable to free the car, got out, jumped over the rail and grabbed Arbour, the report says. He pulled her out of the car and dragged her down a steep embankment.
Saucier went after him and tried to stop Camacho, the report says. But he tripped over some brush, falling backward, and Camacho landed on top of him, Saucier wrote in his report.
When Saucier realized that his 9mm Glock was exposed, he reached with both hands to cover it, he wrote. But Camacho went for the gun. During the struggle, Saucier wrote, Camacho was able to pull the trigger. With Saucier wounded, Camacho fled with the weapon.
Camacho was arrested later that night; the gun was eventually found in Springfield.
As he stood before Gold, Camacho apologized for his actions, and extended his apology “to all of my children, because I won’t be able to be there for them.” But he also said the shooting wasn’t his fault, which appeared to frustrate the judge. Bruce Lorenzen, Camacho’s public defender, said outside the courtroom that his client meant that it was a chance encounter with Saucier and that he didn’t mean to hurt the officer.
Gold told Camacho that he didn’t now how he could say the shooting wasn’t his fault. Although he noted that there was a stretch of about 13 years when Camacho stayed out of trouble, Gold said, “you deserve every single day of this sentence that I’m about to impose, and frankly, when the parole board looks at this sentencing transcript, they should understand that you deserve every day of this sentence.”
Copyright 2008 The Hartford Courant