OGDEN — Alternately sobbing and speaking with anguish or rage, the victim’s mother and her best friend urged the judge Wednesday to impose maximum punishment on Sergio Arturo Chavez for killing his estranged wife.

Second District Judge Joseph Bean did so, ordering the 42-year-old Chavez to serve consecutive terms in the Utah State Prison for the fatal shooting of Stephanie Chavez and the wounding of her friend on July 1, 2020.

Prosecutors charged Chavez with first-degree murder in his estranged wife’s death, but he agreed to a plea bargain in June, admitting to second-degree felony manslaughter. He also pleaded guilty to first-degree felony attempted murder in the friend’s shooting.

Chavez’s attorney, Emily Swenson, asked Bean to run the sentences concurrently. But the judge said the gravity of the crimes and the impact on the victims and others led him to order that Chavez serve the terms back to back.

He sentenced Chavez to one to 15 years for manslaughter and three years to life on the attempted murder conviction, meaning he will serve a minimum of four years behind bars. How long he stays will be up to the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole.

An Ogden woman who said she was Stephanie Chavez’s best friend described to the court the events of the shootings. She accompanied Stephanie to Sergio Chavez’s home and was a few feet behind her when Stephanie kicked open the door of a bedroom where he was with another woman.

“I am thankful to be alive today to speak about my thoughts and suffering, but I am a little jealous of Sergio,” she said. “He is breathing and walking and talking, but Stephanie is not.”

She said she watched .45 caliber bullets entering Stephanie’s head and chest and then felt a bullet strike her arm. She turned and ran and heard at least one more shot as she ran up the street, away from Chavez.

“All thanks to Sergio’s actions, I don’t sleep at night,” she said. “I get to watch a horror flick play in my head, the same one every night, and Sergio is the main character. There is never an ending and it plays over and over.”

She said she remains fearful and watchful and said her own children have been cheated of some of her attention because of the trauma she still suffers.

“Sergio destroyed families that night,” she said, also noting that the couple’s two young children are now without parents, one dead, the other going to prison.

“As much as I try to hate Sergio, I can’t,” she said, adding that the couples had been friends for years. “All I can do is pray for him, but I need closure.”

Photo supplied, Chavez family Stephanie Chavez

Stephanie Chavez’s mother, MaryAnne Martinez of Ogden, said her daughter and Chavez had a good marriage for quite a while, but he became abusive and was addicted to narcotics.

“My daughter adored her husband, but I call him a coward now,” she said, turning to look at Chavez at the defense table. “She tried for years to work it out, but the abuse just kept getting worse and worse.”

Martinez now is raising her only daughter’s two young sons. “How do you tell a 5-year-old his mommy is never coming back?” she said. “Every morning, the minute I wake up I think, ‘How could that coward have done that to their mother?’ He didn’t care about his kids.”

As she walked back to her seat in the gallery, Martinez slowed by the defense table and pointed across to a portrait of her daughter that had been placed on the courtroom’s jury box. “Look what you took away, coward,” she said.

Teral Tree, a deputy Weber County attorney, said Chavez’s claim that he did not know it was Stephanie who was kicking down his door was undermined by text threats he had made up to two days before the shootings.

In March, Chavez texted his wife that he was “going to blow your … head off with a .45,” Tree said. Days before the shootings, he texted her a photo of a .45 pistol with the words, “This is what you get.” Another said, “I’m going to kill you and your family.”

Tree said the forensic evidence also was a strong rebuttal to Chavez’s claim that he shot through the door. Tree said the door was open when Chavez fired.

Swenson said her client has accepted responsibility and showed it by pleading guilty. “He is really remorseful,” she said. “He sobs almost every time I meet him.”

She said the collapse of the marriage was a tumultuous time and that Chavez’ drug use clouded his thinking. “He thinks about those children and how this has destroyed their family,” she said. “He wishes he could go back and take this back and the pain this has caused everyone here.”

Swenson questioned why Stephanie Chavez would go to confront Chavez after they had a confrontation earlier in the day. “Why do you go into his home and kick in the door and start a new fight?” she said. She also said it was dark and Chavez did not know the other person he shot at was Stephanie’s friend.

Speaking through a Spanish interpreter, Chavez said he wanted the families to know “how sorry I am and how pained I am at what I have done.”

He said he misses and still loves his wife and misses his sons. “I am still alive but I am dying a little inside every day,” he said.

Brandon Merrill, a crime victims’ rights attorney, told the judge Chavez “has continued to lie and will continue to do so” about taking his children to Mexico to see his side of the family. “They have lost both parents,” he said, confirming to Bean that Chavez has legally relinquished his right to the children. “They will need therapy and support. They do not need a relationship with someone who has done this to them.”

Bean said the sentence reflected the damage Chavez caused and the potential threat he poses to the second shooting victim and Stephanie Chavez’s family.

He said Chavez’s behavior was not “totally based on meth or other drugs. There are just too many other factors.”

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