A Carrollton man has been sentenced to 60 years in prison after shooting his wife in the face and shoulder outside a Frisco convenience store, then ditching his car, his shirt and the gun as he tried to slip away. A Collin County jury convicted 56-year-old Abelardo Espinoza of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon causing serious bodily injury to a family member, a first-degree felony, before a visiting judge handed down the decades-long sentence.
The shooting happened in the early hours of June 22, 2024, when Frisco police responded to a 7-Eleven at El Dorado Parkway and Preston Road after a woman reported that her husband had shot her, according to the Collin County District Attorney's Office. Officers arriving at the scene found the victim with gunshot wounds to her face and shoulder, and her vehicle had multiple bullet holes, the DA's office said. The woman identified her soon-to-be ex-husband as the shooter.
Surveillance Video Tracked Espinoza's Escape
Detective Miranda Hernandez investigated the case, and prosecutors said security footage from businesses along the Dallas North Tollway and El Dorado Parkway showed Espinoza following the victim before the shooting. The same footage later captured him abandoning his car and shirt before a friend picked him up, according to the DA's office. Per the release, Espinoza discarded the gun as he worked to cover his tracks in the hours after the shooting.
Carrollton police eventually arrested Espinoza, and after his arrest, the DA's office says he confessed to his daughter that he had shot the victim. District Attorney Greg Willis said Espinoza tried to cover his tracks by dumping his car, shirt and gun, and that holding people accountable for domestic violence remains a priority for his office.
Punishment Phase Surfaced Additional Disturbing Evidence
During the trial's punishment phase, prosecutors presented additional evidence that Espinoza possessed child pornography images and videos, as well as bestiality material, according to the DA's office. Visiting Judge Michael Snipes ultimately assessed Espinoza's punishment at 60 years in prison. Assistant Criminal District Attorneys Samantha Shaffer and Ann Mathew prosecuted the case, assisted by DA Investigator Robin Laughon and Victim Assistance Coordinator Dixie Hardin.
The case echoes another Collin County prosecution in which a jury sentenced Joseph Daniel Enriquez of Anna to life in prison in 2022 for fatally shooting his wife, underscoring how the county's courts have repeatedly confronted intimate-partner gun violence. The Espinoza case was first reported by Dallas Express.
A Statewide Pattern of Deadly Domestic Violence
The shooting fits into a much larger statewide picture. Intimate partner violence homicides killed 161 Texans in 2024, including 137 women and 24 men, according to the Texas Council on Family Violence. Those homicides left 104 children having lost at least one parent that year, and 17 friends, family members and bystanders were also killed by the same perpetrators, with eight more injured, the council's data shows.
Firearms were the most common means of death among female intimate-partner homicide victims in Texas in 2024, with 95 women shot, per the council's separate State of the State report. Texas law enforcement fielded 250,131 calls from family-violence victims that year, and the report notes that simple assault, aggravated assault and intimidation were the three most frequently cited offenses in family-violence reports statewide in 2025. Between 2021 and 2025, investigators recovered 37,694 firearms at scenes involving family violence across the state, the same report found.
