BOSTON — A man in Massachusetts was given two life sentences on Wednesday for killing a police officer and a bystander. This came after emotional statements from family, friends, and coworkers about how much pain the killings caused.
Investigators say that Emanuel Lopes, now 26 years old, threw a big rock at the head of Sgt. Michael Chesna, 42, as he ran away from the scene of a small car accident on July 15, 2018.
They said that Lopes grabbed the officer’s gun and shot Chesna several times after the rock knocked him out-of-it. His next move was to run away, and as he did, he shot 77-year-old Vera Adams, who was sitting on her porch.
Authorities say that Chesna’s service pistol was empty when he was caught.
Lopes was found guilty of many charges, including murder, earlier this year. With the punishments handed down on Wednesday, Lopes will be able to get parole in 40 years, which is less than the 55 years that prosecutors had asked for.
Judge Beverly Cannone of Norfolk Superior Court threw out Lopes’s first trial last year because the jury couldn’t agree on a decision. This was her second trial. The new jury also told Cannone in notes that it couldn’t make up its mind, but the judge told the jurors to keep thinking about it.
During the second hearing, prosecutor Greg Connor said that Lopes was a smart killer and wanted 11 charges against him to be found guilty.
The defense said that Lopes, who had never been arrested before, was not guilty because he had a history of mental illness and was in “a state of oblivion” on the day of the killings.
Before he was sentenced, Lopes spoke to the court and said sorry to the two families and the Weymouth police force. “I’m sorry. “This should not have happened,” he said.
Two former Weymouth police officers who were called that day talked about how much it hurt them that they couldn’t save Chesna and how the murder had ruined so many lives.
Nicholas Marini told the court, “The image of the defendant standing over Mike and shooting him multiple times will always be etched in my mind, and the flashbacks I experienced every day are something that no one should ever have to go through.”
“Even after six years, these horrible memories still consume me and haunt my dreams,” Marini said. “I will never be the same as a husband, a father, or a friend again.”
Cindy, Chesna’s widow, read letters from her two kids about how much they missed their dad and talked about how hard it has been to rebuild their lives after the death of someone she called a hero, a guardian, and “a beautiful person inside and out.”
Chesna stood in front of some family photos and said, “They will always live with the grief that I can’t fix and the pain that I can’t heal.” “But I can only ask the court to give them one thing: the peace of mind that the monster who killed their dad will never get away.”
Larry Tipton, Lopes’s lawyer, asked that his client’s mental illness be taken into account when arguing for a lighter sentence—25 years for killing Chesna and 15 years for killing Adams—to be spent at the same time. He said that his request wasn’t meant to “destroy or take away from the family and victims’ personal and honest beliefs and feelings.”
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