A violent thug who ambushed two women on a Chicago street and beat them with a baseball bat, leaving one unable to walk or speak, was sentenced Thursday to 90 years in prison.
Heriberto Viramontes was out for money and blood when he slipped the bat out of his sleeve and pummeled Irish exchange student Natasha McShane and Stacy Jurich and left them for dead on a street in April 2010, a judge said.
“Their only sin was thinking it was safe to walk four or five blocks in the city of Chicago,” Judge Jorge Alonso told the court, as he slapped the reputed gang member with four consecutive sentences for attempted murder and armed robbery, according to the Chicago Tribune.
McShane’s mother, Sheila, travelled to Chicago from Northern Ireland for the hearing.
Natasha, 27, who suffers from severe brain damage and can barely walk or talk, was unable to attend.
“[She has been sentenced] to a life of pain, misery and unfulfillment,” Sheila McShane said while speaking in court.
“A swing of the bat is what robbed our beautiful daughter and sister of her future,” she said.
“She is still alive, but it feels we have lost her.”
Jurich, 28, was also seriously injured in the April 23, 2010, attack. She now suffers from violent seizures and migraines that have left her unable to drive or work.
Yet the former financial service worker remained hopeful in her remarks after the sentencing, telling reports she was thankful for the support she received from the city of Chicago.
“It’s still a beautiful place for us to live,” Jurich said, her voice welling with emotion. “I’m very excited about the outcome today, and I’m happy he can’t hurt anybody again.”
Before the attack, Jurich and McShane had become close pals after getting to know each other for about four months, the Tribune reported.
McShane was a grad student in urban development at the University of Illinois at Chicago and had recently landed an internship that would allow her to stay in the city a while longer.
On the night of the attack, she and Jurich were out celebrating at a popular bar in Bucktown, a trendy neighborhood north of downtown.
Prosecutors said Viramontes and a female friend were driving through the neighborhood at about 3 a.m. after a night out clubbing when he decided to rob someone.
After hopping out of the van with a wooden Rawlings bat, he snuck up on the pair as they walked through a viaduct on North Damen Ave. and struck Jurich first, hitting her in the back of the head, the Tribune reported.
He then swung at McShane, sending her crumpling to the sidewalk, and ran off with both women’s purses.
Jurich described the attack on the witness stand Thursday, saying she was still haunted by “the sound of the bat breaking my head open.”
“One moment I went from being smiling and laughing to being on my knees in a pool of my own blood,” she said.
Marcy Cruz served as Viramontes’ getaway driver.
She struck a deal with prosecutors to testify against Viramontes and was sentenced to 22 years behind bars.
Before the sentencing, a state prosecutor Anita Alvarez displayed the weapon used in the attack.
Viramontes, 35, was also given the chance to speak and expressed remorse for the pain he’d caused the victims.
Alvarez called the apology bogus.
“He’s the personification of evil,” she said afterward, according to the Tribune.
With News Wire Services
ON A MOBILE DEVICE? WATCH VIDEO HERE
Correction:
An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Natasha McShane as a student at the University of Chicago at the time she was attacked. She was a student at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
