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Carlos Albarracin was shot and killed while in his truck on Nov. 10, 2021.
AURORA, Colo. — When a man was sentenced to decades in prison Tuesday, a family in Aurora said they finally got the justice they’d been waiting two years for.
Andrew Jacobs was sentenced to 85 years in prison after pleading guilty to one count of second-degree murder, two counts of aggravated robbery, and three violent crime sentence enhancers for a string of carjackings in November 2021.
Carlos Albarracin, a young father who had recently moved to the U.S. from Colombia, was shot and killed by Jacobs while sitting in his pickup truck at an apartment complex. His then 6-year-old son, Emmanuel, was in the truck at the time, but was able to get out unharmed.
“Emmanuel talks about it still every once in a while, we try not to bring it up to him,” said Dan Smafield, a friend of the Albarracin family. “But whenever he talks about it, we try to keep it natural and say whatever he wants to say.”
Carlos Albarracin’s cousin, Miguel Albarracin, said the dad-son duo was very close.
“He was always attached to his dad,” Miguel Albarracin said. “These are things you never imagine will happen. I loved him like a brother.”
The family had moved to the United States from Colombia just a few months prior to the shooting. Angela Arismendi, Carlos Albarracin’s wife, said they came to Colorado looking for a better and safer life.
Now, they’re moving forward as best they can.
“I like to include them in American traditions,” Smafield said. “They came over and carved pumpkins for the first time. Emmanuel went trick-or-treating with us, we’ll do Thanksgiving.”
One concern for Emmanuel is that he is starting to forget his father, since he was so young when the shooting happened.
“Emmanuel tells me sometimes he forgets things from his father, you know, he only knew his father until he was six years old, now he’s starting to forget some of his memories with his father,” Smafield said.
Miguel Albarracin said that while justice was served Tuesday, no one can give them what they really want.
“Despite the sentencing, we can’t bring back Carlos,” Albarracin said.
The district attorney’s office said Andrew Jacobs was connected to about a dozen different crimes that day in just two hours.
“If you put a red dot on a map for every crime that law enforcement investigators linked to this defendant, it would literally light up like a Christmas tree,” said Eric Ross, a spokesperson for the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office. “This is a case that took multiple law enforcement officers— we are talking dozens of officers with both the Aurora Police Department and Denver Police Department who were just being constantly dispatched to various crimes throughout the area.”
He said that offering a plea deal to Jacobs was partially to protect the Albarracin family.
“A lot of time and effort went into really thinking what do we want to do with this case, and we offered a plea agreement to spare that now-eight-year-old child from having to take the witness stand and explain in front of a jury and a bunch of strangers when he had to witness his father get murdered right in front of him,” Ross said. “Does the plea agreement make sense? Absolutely, it does.”
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