Woman Shot In Face Forgives Gunman At His Sentencing
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (CBS4) -- Fourth Judicial District Judge Lin Billings-Vela sentenced Simon Peter Escamilla to more than 85 years in prison Friday for shooting a stranger in the face.
Before she finished, she turned to the woman that Escamilla shot in March of 2018.
"I've learned more from you about grace and faith in this courtroom than I could ever express," the judge told Jannell Kilgore.
Kilgore talks through scars, but her words are sweet -- even those about the incident and her attacker.
"My heart breaks," she told CBS affiliate KKTV. "For his family and mostly for him. You know? He's never going to experience children, or anything for that one bad decision."
Escamilla was found guilty in January of Attempted First Degree Murder and other crimes for approaching Kilgore's car and pulling the trigger. He thought she had witnessed him shooting at someone earlier in the evening and followed her home. She thought he wanted to ask for assistance.
"I thought he was there to ask me if somebody lived in the apartments or ask me for change, right? I didn't have any thought other than that, and he proceeded to pull out a gun and shoot me in my face through my car window."
She said she didn't realize she was shot until she touched her face and felt the flesh move. Months of recovery followed.
"That is me," Kilgore said as she held up a picture of herself after the shooting.
While the moment of the shooting doesn't define her, she does not wish it to define Escamilla, either.
"I forgive you. I have no hate whatsoever," she told him in court Friday.
The first trial against Escamilla was ruled a mistrial because one of the jurors was allegedly texting her boyfriend, according to the judge.
Following the second trial's verdict, Kilgore hugged Escamilla's mother.
"It just goes to show, you are not promised your next breath," Kilgore said. "So you know, live life today and give somebody a smile. Help somebody out, do what you can to make somebody else's life a little better."
