ELYRIA — With their divorce trial set for today, Pamela and Herminio Carrasquillo still had no answer about whether she would be convicted of shooting him in his bed in Avon last January.

An eight-woman, two-man jury deliberated about two hours Wednesday before telling the staff of county Common Pleas Court Judge James Burge it wanted deliberations to resume today.

Pamela Carrasquillo, 52, and her estranged husband, Herminio Carrasquillo, 49, sat on opposite sides of the courtroom as her trial on charges of attempted aggravated murder and attempted murder drew to a close.

If convicted of either charge, she faces six to 13 years in prison. The prosecution, defense and judge agreed to drop three other charges, including felonious assault, fearing they would confuse the jury.

Deliberations were scheduled to resume at 9 a.m. today.

Meanwhile, Timothy Smith, the attorney representing Herminio Carrasquillo in his divorce, said he didn’t know if the criminal case would preempt the divorce case. The judge in the divorce case, Debra Boros, declined to comment.

In closing arguments, Assistant County Prosecutor Sherry Glass called Pamela Carrasquillo “the only one really in this case who had a motive.

“She was jealous and there was an aspect of greed that caused her to do this,” Glass said, who also noted that Carrasquillo would have been the beneficiary of her husband’s $500,000 life insurance policy.

While there was testimony that Herminio Carrasquillo had been unfaithful, Glass said, “Honestly, does it matter if someone is cheating every day of their marriage? They don’t deserve to be killed.”

Glass also said that a gun range attendant bolstered the case by saying Pamela Carrasquillo and her daughter Alicia visited the range about a month before Herminio Carrasquillo was shot. But defense attorney Raymond Froelich told the jury that Avon police did not thoroughly investigate other possible suspects, including a man who had several dinner dates with a woman Herminio Carrasquillo had been seeing.

“I would submit to you this case was botched from the beginning,” Froelich said.

Just one particle of gunshot residue was found on Pamela Carrasquillo’s hands — the same amount that was found on the hands of one of the couple’s sons — and police never did gunshot residue tests on her car although an officer said it was warm, Froelich said.

“This would have been a heck of a lot stronger case if they would have found gunshot residue in the car,” Froelich said.

He said Pamela Carrasquillo freely allowed officers to search her home and do the residue test.

Froelich also challenged the testimony of a female jail inmate, who testified that Pamela Carrasquillo had confided in her. The woman’s testimony made no sense, he said, pointing out that she said Pamela Carrasquillo told her she ran the mile and a half between her home and the one where her estranged husband was, and that she had used a key to unlock the door — a door Herminio Carrasquillo had testified was unlocked. While Froelich argued that Herminio Carrasquillo gave conflicting accounts as to whether he recognized his attacker, Glass used a portion of her closing argument to replay for the jury the 911 call made by Herminio Carrasquillo after he was shot. In it, he is heard saying: “I believe my ex-wife shot me. She might still be in the house.”  

Herminio Carrasquillo, a $100,000-a-year supervisor at General Motors, was shot twice in the chest and once in his leg and arm. He has filed a civil suit against his wife asking for damages greater than $25,000.

Contact Cindy Leise at 329-7245 or cleise@chroniclet.com.

 

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