Family of murdered hostage speaks in court as Roseville shooter gets life sentence
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- Eric James Abril was sentenced to life without parole for first-degree murder.
- Abril killed a hostage and wounded to two other people during a 2023 police standoff.
- The California Highway Patrol planned to serve a search warrant at a Roseville park.
It’s been nearly three years since James and Patricia MacEgan went out for a stroll on a warm spring afternoon in a field near Mahany Park in Roseville.
The couple, who had been married for 50 years, didn’t know a gunman would take them hostage while trying evade police after a shootout in the crowded neighborhood park.
“It was like a shootout in the Wild West,” Patricia MacEgan said Wednesday in a Placer County courtroom. “Something you’d see on television; not our local park.”
During that 2023 standoff with law enforcement officials at Mahany Park, Eric James Abril killed James MacEgan. He also wounded Patricia MacEgan and a California Highway Patrol officer who was among a team of investigators who approached Abril in the crowded Roseville park that afternoon.
On Wednesday afternoon, Placer Superior Court Judge Michael Jones sentenced Abril to spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole, along with additional prison time for the other crimes he committed during the 2023 standoff at the park.
Authorities said Abril shot James MacEgan, of Roseville, and MacEgan’s wife during the April 6, 2023, standoff with law enforcement officials. James MacEgan, 72, died from his injuries. Patricia MacEgan and California Highway Patrol Officer Matthew Hiatt were wounded by gunfire.
Police officials said Abril took the couple hostage during the standoff after a shootout with CHP investigators trying to serve a search warrant at the park. Authorities said Abril shot Hiatt during the shootout with the officers at the park before he confronted the MacEgans.
MacEgan family speaks in court
Before Abril was formally sentenced, the court allowed the MacEgan family to speak about the impact of these crimes and the family patriarch’s death.
Kevin MacEgan, the couple’s eldest son, said his parents were victimized in this manner because of the choices made by Abril — and by the CHP, to approach Abril in a park filled with children playing baseball and other visitors.
“My parents would have died for every one of those kids,” Kevin MacEgan told the judge.
Only three weeks before the CHP shootout with Abril at Mahany Park, Kevin MacEgan had served as master of ceremonies at his parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. The couple was married on St. Patrick’s Day, and they celebrated their anniversary on the same holiday 50 years later.
Kevin MacEgan said his father’s honor, wisdom, kindness and character will serve as his lasting legacy.
Rebecca MacEgan, the MacEgans’ daughter-in-law, said the family has been bombarded by “waves of fear and trauma” in the three years since the deadly shooting. She said she struggled having to inform her five children that their grandfather was gone and their grandmother seriously wounded.
“Anything (bad) feels possible, and nothing feels safe,” she said in court.
Abril pleaded guilty to murder
Abril, 38, of Roseville, had been scheduled to go to trial this month. Instead, Abril pleaded guilty in early March to first-degree murder for killing the hostage during the standoff at the Roseville park.
Prosecutors said Abril also admitted to a special circumstance allegation that he committed the murder during a kidnapping, along with aggravating factors in the crimes.
Abril’s trial was initially scheduled to begin a year ago but was delayed after Abril changed his plea to not guilty by reason of insanity in February 2025. The trial was expected to last 25 days. If he was convicted, a jury would then have to decide whether Abril was insane when the park shooting occurred.
Abril also faced two additional counts of attempted murder of a law enforcement officer, alleging that Abril also fired gunshots at two other officers, Leo Smith and Tyson Becker, during the Mahany Park standoff. At the time, Becker was a Sacramento County deputy probation officer and Smith was a CHP officer, according to compensation records provided by the county and state to Transparent California.
While awaiting prosecution for the Mahany Park shooting, Abril escaped from Placer County sheriff’s custody while receiving medical treatment at Sutter Roseville Medical Center. He escaped three months after his arrest at the park.
Placer County sheriff’s officials have said Abril was being guarded by a deputy but managed “to defeat his restraints” and slip out of the hospital shortly after 3 a.m. July 9, 2023, while the deputy was on a bathroom break. Abril was captured after a 33-hour manhunt.
All the remaining criminal charges against Abril were dropped as part of his plea deal with prosecutor.
CHP planned to serve a search warrant
CHP investigators planned to serve a search warrant on Abril in connection with a shooting two months earlier on a Sacramento County freeway, where gunfire struck a vehicle. Investigators believed Abril was traveling south on Highway 99 where he pulled out a gun and fired at another vehicle on the busy freeway.
In filed court documents, Placer County Deputy District Attorney David Tellman wrote that multiple CHP detectives tried to detain Abril on April 6, 2023, at Mahany Park to serve a search warrant and search his vehicle.
At the time of the initial gun battle, the MacEgans were on an afternoon walk through a nearby field. Abril took cover in a creek in that same field after the initial shootout, the prosecutor wrote in a September 2023 court document. Tellman said the couple heard the gunshots coming from nearby and took cover in the grass near the creek.
As officers converged at the park and created a perimeter around Abril’s location, Abril made his way up the creek to where the MacEgans had taken cover in the grass, according to Tellman.
The prosecutor said Abril confronted the couple, at which point James MacEgan was shot and killed, before Abril grabbed MacEgan’s wife and pulled her into the creek.
In court Wednesday, Patricia explained those horrifying moments. She said was given a moment to help her dying husband or say goodbye to him.
“I lived each moment like it would be my last,” she told the judge.
Abril pointed his gun at her head as he ordered her to call 911, which she did. The prosecutor said that Abril, during the 911 call, instructed Patricia MacEgan to order law enforcement officials to back up from their positions and to move aerial drones that were monitoring Abril’s location.
“When (Abril) became frustrated that law enforcement wasn’t responding to his demands quickly enough, Abril shot Patricia MacEgan through the shoulder (which was captured by drone video),” Tellman wrote in the court document.
Soon after, Roseville police officers and other assisting law enforcement officials used heavily armored vehicles to make their way to Abril’s location in the creek.
The prosecutor said Abril then used Patricia MacEgan as a “human shield” as he approached the officers and surrendered.
Abril was wounded in an exchange of gunfire with officers, police said. He was hospitalized until the following evening, when he was booked at the Placer County Jail.
Victim’s wife offers forgiveness
Patricia MacEgan explained in court that she believed she would bleed out that day after Abril shot her in the arm, but the bullet missed an artery that likely would’ve led to her death. After extended physical therapy, she said she can use her arm but struggles to lift it.
She has also undergone psychological therapy to help her deal with the trauma from the shooting and living her life without her best friend and husband.
She told the judge that Abril should never be released from prison, but forgave the defendant while speaking to him directly in court.
“You thought your guns gave you power,” Patricia MacEgan told Abril. “Guns don’t give you power, Eric. Your free will gives you power.”
She told Abril that he has the free will to become a better person, even while in prison for the rest of his life. As Abril stood silently behind a protective glass with his wrists in handcuffs behind his back, he appeared to be listening to the still-grieving wife as she told the convicted murderer to pray, “because God has not abandoned you.”
“Before you go, I want you to know that I forgive you, Eric. I truly forgive you,” Patricia MacEgan said. “Now you have to learn how to forgive yourself.”
This story was originally published March 25, 2026 at 7:27 PM.
