A Vancouver man who kidnapped and killed his 2-year-old daughter in revenge for a broken marriage acknowledged Wednesday that no apology could absolve him.
“There is no punishment that will repair the damage I have done,” Gustavo E. Villalobos-Carranza said through a translator at his sentencing hearing. “I don’t deserve forgiveness.”
Multnomah County Circuit Judge Christopher Marshall sentenced Villalobos-Carranza, now 32, to life in prison. He will be eligible for parole in 30 years as part of a plea deal that reduced an aggravated murder charge to second-degree murder.
Aggravated murder, the only crime that technically remains punishable by death in Oregon, was restricted by lawmakers in 2019 to only a handful of categories but still includes the premeditated murder of a child.
Villalobos-Carranza, a construction worker by trade, had split with his wife, Luisa Rodriguez, a few months before he kidnapped their daughter, Brianna Rodriguez, from her mother’s Vancouver apartment in the North Garrison Heights neighborhood just after midnight on Oct. 31, 2021, according to court records.
He turned himself in a few hours and investigators later found the 2-year-old with her throat cut in Portland.
Luisa Rodriguez wept as she held her new baby in her arms during the hearing.
“Gustavo has left me without a piece of myself,” she said.
— Zane Sparling; zsparling@oregonian.com; 503-319-7083; @pdxzane
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