Widow speaks to husband’s killer before he is sentenced

MARTINEZ >> A 21-yearold man was sentenced to 15 years in state prison Wednesday as part of a plea deal with prosecutors in the 2017 shooting death of a Discovery Bay resident.

Before Brayan Zavalagarcia was sentenced, he heard from close friends and family members of Bradley Machugh, 48, whom Zavala-garcia shot and killed in October 2017. Authorities said at the time that Machugh may have confronted a group of people, including the defendant, who were recklessly driving through his neighborhood, apparently in search of a party.

Machugh, who left behind a wife and two sons, was seen by his neighbors as a protector of the Wilde Drive neighborhood where they lived. He was described as someone always willing to lend a hand or organize a get-together.

“The devastation is just too much,” Lanie Machugh, Bradley Machugh’s wife, said as Zavala-garcia sat a few feet away, dressed in a yellow inmate jumpsuit. “I feel like I died that night. …I pray for you and I pray for your family.”

She described in heartwrenching detail the last few moments she spent with her husband.

She said they were walking a dog when he got into an argument with the defendant and others in his group. She left to take the dog home, then returned, she told Zavala-garcia in court, half expecting that “you and your friends would be beating up my old man husband.”

“I found him lying in the bushes,” she said, sobbing as she spoke. “He was already gone, but I had to try. … I put my hand under to see if there was an exit wound, but there wasn’t”

She said she tried CPR but to no avail. As police and EMTS arrived, she and several neighbors wondered how they would explain to the couple’s sons — who had slept through the shooting — that their father was dead.

“You could have left. You could have just left,” Lanie Machugh said in court.

Zavala-garcia, whose name is also listed as “Brayan Zavala” in court records, did not speak at the hearing. But Judge Barbara Zuniga told him before handing down the sentence that she could tell by the look on his face that he regretted his actions.

“I really hope you do something with your life,” Zuniga said. “Gangs will try to recruit you in prison. … If you go down that road, you’re going to be before another judge again.”

Zavala-garcia, an Antioch resident, was 19 when he shot Bradley Machugh. The shooting was preceded by a heated argument that started when Machugh confronted Zavala-garcia and the others, authorities said at the time.

“Tough decisions have to be made, and this was a difficult decision, but in judgment and experience I felt this was the best resolution, given some risks we faced at trial securing a murder conviction,” prosecutor Derek Butts said.

The terms of the plea deal required Zavala-garcia to plead no contest to manslaughter and accept a 15-year prison term. He has credit for roughly two years he already served in jail.

Neighbor Ryan Johnson said Machugh was “one of my best friends and one of the most generous people I’ve ever met.”

“I think you’re getting off easy in this sentence,” Johnson said in court Wednesday. “Although I’ve not fully forgiven you, I’ve come to realize that you’re just a dumb kid who made a horrible decision that night.”