SAN JOSE — Former UFC champion Cain Velasquez was sentenced Monday afternoon to a 5-year prison term — which will be shortened by time served — following his no-contest plea last year to attempted murder and other crimes for a violent 2022 car chase in which he repeatedly shot at a man accused of molesting his young son but wounded the man’s stepfather instead.
The sentence was issued in a packed San Jose courtroom by Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Arthur Bocanegra. Velasquez, 42, who had been free on $1 million bail and supervised release since his charges were approved for trial in late 2022, was taken into jail custody by court bailiffs at the end of Monday’s hearing.
After accounting for his jail time in the months after his arrest and his monitored release, Velasquez is expected to actually serve about a year in state prison.
Bocanegra, fighting tears, said he heavily weighed how the attack took place as Velasquez was still coming to terms with the possibility that his child had been abused at a daycare operated by the victims.
“This case is unique and unlike any other case this court has presided over,” Bocanegra said. “The mitigating factors outweigh the aggravating factors.”
The victims took exception with the judge’s stance, noting that the allegation against their son has not been proven in court and should not have been treated as fact. Patty Bender objected to the sentence issued and said she was confident her son — Harry Goularte, the main target of Velasquez’s gunfire — will be exonerated.
“The sentence is extremely disappointing. It’s based on an alleged allegation that has no basis,” she said outside the courtroom. “We are looking forward to the opportunity … to prove that.”
Velasquez was conciliatory in a statement to the court prior to his sentencing.
“My actions were reckless and extremely dangerous. I’m ashamed and regretful for how I handled myself on the day of my crime,” he said. “Out of all this, I wish safe healing for my family, and to the Goulartes, I wish safe healing, and to the community, I wish safe healing.”
During the lengthy hearing that began Monday morning, Paul Bender — who was shot twice and wounded during the Feb. 28, 2022 episode — gave a victim statement to Bocanegra alongside his wife, Patty, who was with her son in the vehicle when Velasquez rammed and opened fire on them near Monterey Road and Bailey Avenue. He described how he continues to have severely limited use of his right arm and suffers from post-traumatic stress and urged the judge to not only punish Velasquez for his violence but for his subversion of the criminal justice system.
“Cain Velasquez demonstrated that he has no respect for the judicial system, does not care about the rule of law, and has no regard for human life,” Paul Bender said in court Monday. “(My family) will never be the same because of Cain Velasquez’s actions.”
There was a wide chasm between the sentences sought by Deputy District Attorney Aaron French, who asked for a 30-years-to-life prison term, while Velasquez’s attorney Renee Hessling requested that the judge dismiss a gun-based charging enhancement and grant her client probation.
Hessling called the sentence a “mixed bag” because it still involved incarceration for Velasquez but expressed gratitude to Bocanegra for recognizing that this was a stark lapse in behavior for her client.
“The judge had a very difficult decision to make. He had a lot of pressure from both sides, but again, I think the facts are clear in this case,” Hessling said. “Mr. Velasquez is a good person. He made a bad choice.”
Assistant District Attorney Angela Bernhard, who oversees felony prosecutions in the county, said her office disagreed with Bocanegra’s sentence — as reflected in its pursuit of a decades-long prison term — but voiced satisfaction that Velasquez is paying for his crimes.
“The judge did justice in this case,” Bernhard said. “He believed that what Mr. Velasquez had done was dangerous and that he had endangered the public in addition to endangering these victims, and he held him accountable for that.”
What had not been heard publicly until the sentencing hearing was a 911 call recording in which Patty Bender narrates the 11-mile high-speed chase in real-time to an emergency dispatcher, describing how they fled in desperate search of a responding police officer and ambulance after Velasquez shot at them.
“He’s shooting! He’s shooting at us! Hurry!” Patty Bender said after the first gunshots in the middle of a busy Morgan Hill thoroughfare.
That was followed a few minutes later near the second shooting site, close to a charter school letting out for the day, with Patty Bender telling the dispatcher, “We’re going 100 miles an hour. Is anybody coming?” followed soon after by, “Paul’s bleeding everywhere!”
In August, Velasquez pleaded no contest to attempted murder and nine gun assault crimes in the 2022 attack after reaching an agreement with prosecutors that removed premeditation from the allegations, eliminating a mandatory life prison term. Velasquez’s sentencing was delayed from January after Hessling balked at the sentence proposed by prosecutors; she filed a Racial Justice Act motion, alleging bias in the sentencing methodology, which was denied by Bocanegra.
On the afternoon of the attack, Goularte was with his stepfather and mother as they all drove from Morgan Hill to San Jose so Goularte could get fitted for an ankle monitor in accordance with his pretrial supervision by the county. A few days earlier, he had been arraigned on one felony charge of a lewd and lascivious act with a child, identified later as Velasquez’s then 4-year-old son.
Goularte — who has been ordered to stand trial — and his family have staunchly denied the accusations against him. His parents told this news organization earlier this year that sheriff’s office investigators declined to review what they say is exonerating evidence, including a corroborated alibi and video surveillance showing Goularte was not on the premises of the family’s home daycare at the time the sexual abuse was reported to have occurred.
That trial is scheduled to begin in the summer.
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