Carbondale restaurant owner Fredy Cabrera was sentenced to 30 years in prison Wednesday for shooting and killing his stepdaughter’s 22-year-old boyfriend Douglas Menjivar outside an apartment near Glenwood Springs the night of July 31, 2013.

“I do believe he resented their relationship,” 9th District Judge Denise Lynch said of the hard feelings Cabrera harboured about his stepdaughter Leydy Trejo’s relationship with Menjivar while she was 18 and still in high school.

But Lynch discounted Cabrera’s claims that he simply wanted to talk to Trejo that night when he got a ride to the apartment just south of Glenwood Springs where she had moved in with Menjivar and met them in the dark with a loaded pistol.

“If that’s true, then why did Mr. Cabrera have a gun?” Lynch asked in announcing her decision before a courtroom filled with family and friends of both Cabrera and Menjivar.

Lynch also rejected the notion that Cabrera was acting in self defense when a physical struggle ensued between he and Menjivar, as defense attorneys for Cabrera had suggested.

“It’s not self defense when you totally empty your gun,” Lynch said, directing her comments to the defendant.

The 30-year sentence, plus five years mandatory parole, landed in the middle of the 16 to 48-year range that was possible after Cabrera pleaded guilty in August to second-degree murder in a plea deal offered by 9th District Attorney Sherry Caloia.

Cabrera had been scheduled to stand trial this month for first-degree murder, a charge that would have carried a possible sentence of life in prison without parole.

At the Wednesday sentencing hearing, Assistant DA Scott Turner asked Lynch to impose the full 48 years, while Cabrera’s attorneys, Colleen Scissors and Kathy Goudy, sought 16 years.

“The only thing [Menjivar] did wrong was to be in love with Leydy Trejo,” Turner argued. “He [Cabrera] went there that night and laid in wait for them to come home. He shot and killed [Menjivar], and he ran as his daughter laid there screaming.”

Trejo was also hit in the lower leg by one of the six bullets fired by Cabrera. An assault charge stemming from her injuries was dropped as part of the plea bargain.

“This is nothing but a cold-blooded murder committed by a cold-blooded murderer,” Turner said.

Cabrera kept his composure when the sentence was announced, despite an earlier tearful plea for mercy from the court while speaking on his behalf.

Following the decision and before he was escorted by sheriff’s deputies out of the courtroom, he turned and nodded to his family sitting behind him, including wife Vilma and Trejo, who were visibly shaken by the sentencing decision.

Trejo and her mother declined to comment afterwards.

Goudy said she was “disappointed” with the judge’s decision, but said Cabrera likely would not appeal the sentence.

“He has accepted responsibility for this, and taking things any further is not what he wants to do,” she said.

Cabrera, 41, will have an opportunity for parole after serving three-quarters of his sentence, or 23 years. He was credited for 426 days already served in the Garfield County Jail since his arrest the day after the incident.

Cabrera told the judge is remorseful for his actions and apologized to Menjivar’s family, including Douglas Menjivar’s stepfather Jorge Crespin Pena who was in the courtroom. Cabrera offered to pay $10,000 to send Menjivar’s body back to his native El Salvador to be buried with family members there.

“I am so sorry, and am saying this for everybody [involved] from the bottom of my heart,” Cabrera told the court.

Trejo also asked the judge to impose a lighter sentence on her stepfather, saying the family is struggling to keep up with things including running the family restaurant, El Horizonte in Carbondale.

“I’m no one to judge,” Trejo said. “Despite what happened, he is always going to be my dad. Even though I miss Douglas, we also miss our dad.”

Pena, however, told the court he believes Cabrera deserved no mercy.

Even though he was not Menjivar’s natural father, Pena said he considered him his own son.

“I ask you to impose the maximum penalty,” he said through a court interpreter. “If my son cannot be here, [Cabrera] should not be either.”

Arguments made at the sentencing hearing by prosecutors and the defense revolved around whether Cabrera meant to kill Menjivar and injure or possibly kill Trejo at the same time, or whether he was impaired by alcohol and reacted to a possible physical confrontation from Menjivar by firing his gun.

“There’s no question he wasn’t happy with their relationship,” Scissors said. “He was just trying to get Douglas to respect his wishes, and he did everything he could to [support Menjivar].”

That included initially sponsoring Menjivar into the United States from his and Cabrera’s native El Salvador, giving him a job and even starting a new business for Menjivar to run so he could support Trejo, Scissors argued.

But Turner presented evidence that would have otherwise come out at trial, including cell phone messages, that Cabrera had made threats of physical harm to both Menjivar and Trejo in the months leading up to the shooting and the day of.

“This defendant followed through on those threats,” Turner said.

Turner also played the 911 recording from the night of the shooting that he said emphasizes the “panic” that went on in the neighborhood as a result, adding to the aggravating circumstances in the case.