Onyeri takes stand, admits firing shots
The two people central to Chimene Onyeri’s alleged shooting of state District Judge Julie Kocurek took the witness stand Thursday — and one of them started sobbing. It was not the person who was nearly killed in front of her teenage son.
Kocurek was composed as she presented gripping testimony about her road to recovery from four gunshot blasts in November 2015, revealing that at the darkest point “I felt so damaged and I wanted to die.”
Testifying for more than an hour before a packed courtroom of prominent lawyers and her judicial peers, Kocurek touched on the 20-some surgeries required to patch skin on the left side of her body and the therapy sessions she needed to “restore life.” She was
happy to report that her hand is doing much better.
Kocurek’s stoicism was a contrast to the emotional, meandering and profanity-laced testimony from Onyeri, the 30-yearold Houston native who pros-
ecutors say plotted to kill Kocurek before she could send him to prison on a probation violation.
After more than three hours of testimony, Onyeri ended up admitting to walking up to Kocurek’s Tarrytown home and shooting into the Lexus SUV in which she was a passenger, but said it was only to destroy her property. His intent was akin to slashing her tires, he said.
“I didn’t even know she was in the car,” he said.
At one point, Onyeri even spoke to Kocurek, who was sitting in the audience. He apologized for getting mad after she threatened to send him to prison on a probation violation, but he admitted that at the time, “I wanted to punch her.”
“For you just to get up here, I got a mama,” he said. “Feel what I’m saying? ... Keep on going, man.”
Onyeri said he discovered that Kocurek was injured after he returned to Houston and was eating with a friend — “That’s why you don’t shoot into cars, man.”
Among the 17 charges Onyeri faces is conspiracy to participate in a racketeering enterprise that carries a possible life sentence for the judge’s shooting. A jury is expected to render a verdict sometime next week.
Multiple witnesses have testified over the past four weeks that Onyeri had plotted to kill Kocurek, tracking down her address and phone number. A co-defendant who was with him on the night of the shooting described Onyeri as “laser focused” to carry out the assassination. Another said Onyeri sent a text message with, “SMH,” — short for “shaking my head” — after learning Kocurek was alive. Another said he received a text message from Onyeri with bullet emojis.
Testimony ended Thursday with Onyeri’s lawyers turning him over for questioning from prosecutors, who will pick back up Monday with cross-examination. Onyeri is expected to be the final witness before lawyers present their closing arguments to the jury.
Often rambling from topic to topic and laughing at his own lines, Onyeri seemed at ease as he denied involvement in both an alleged tax fraud scheme and an alleged credit card scheme that prosecutors say he orchestrated. He did admit involvement in a debit card scheme and explained how to apply devices to ATMs to make it happen. He went to great lengths to insist he would not rat on any of his alleged co-conspirators, but he called out many by name, saying they lied on the witness stand.
He began sobbing as he discussed his refusal several years ago to accept a plea deal in an aggravated robbery case out of Houston, insisting he’d rather fight for his innocence than to plead guilty and be sentenced to time served. A jury ultimately acquitted him.
“I don’t rob women!” he cried out.
Kocurek confirmed that she had planned to send to Onyeri to prison for six or seven years after he picked up new fraud charges out of Louisiana. She described the charges as similar to the 2012 fraud case in her court stemming from Rollingwood police finding Onyeri and another man in possession of stolen credit card information.
Kocurek said she was in a bad spot after the 2015 attack, saying she was afraid for her family and believed they “would be so much better without me.”
She even considered walking away from the job she’s held since her 1999 appointment by then-Gov. George W. Bush, but thought she owed it to the community to continue.
“This job, I love it,” she said. “It was my passion. I felt this was bigger than me; it was an attack on our justice system. I felt I had to go back to work to show you can’t do this to our justice system.”