AUSTIN, Texas – The trial of the man arrested and charged with shooting Travis County Judge Julie Kocurek begins Monday, March 26.
Chimene Onyeri, 29, is believed to have shot Kocurek in the driveway outside her Austin home in November 2015. Kocurek was severely injured, but has since recovered and returned to the bench.
Onyeri and two other men are in jail for the shooting. Kocurek was believed to be targeted because she was supposed to sentence Onyeri for financial-related crimes.
In February 2017, Travis County commissioners signed off on a $500,000 settlement with Kocurek over how the county handled a threat before her shooting.
After the shooting, a previous threat against an unspecified judge came to light. Court documents show two weeks before the judge was shot, a woman called the Travis County District Attorney's Office and said a man, Chimene Onyeri, wanted to kill a Travis County judge.
Questions were raised about how the threat was investigated and why Kocurek wasn't warned.
Onyeri is also facing six counts of witness tampering, after he allegedly tried to silence witnesses from his jail cell.
A federal indictment said Onyeri passed notes to a fellow Travis County Jail inmate asking him to call all of the witnesses and tell them not to talk to investigators.
The accomplices of Onyeri, Marcellus Burgin, and Rasul Scott were also charged.
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