At sentencing hearing, Officer Brian Arterburn’s wife forgives man who ran him over
The man who ran over a Wichita police officer trying to halt a fleeing SUV in 2017 — causing disabling brain damage and ultimately ending a law enforcement career — was ordered by a Sedgwick County judge on Monday to serve the next three decades in prison, bringing what the officer’s wife said was peace and closure to their family.
“Today is the final chapter and we got a little closure in the criminal proceedings,” Claudale Arterburn said moments after Judge Bruce Brown told 33-year-old Justin Terrazas that he would be incarcerated for 341 months for several crimes including driving over Brian Arterburn on Feb. 7, 2017. Arterburn was deploying a tire deflation device at Topeka and Kincaid in south Wichita to stop Terrazas’ vehicle.
“We feel like we have peace. It’s taken us a long time, but we feel like we’ve forgiven Mr. Terrazas and hope that he can make something of his life, even if it’s behind bars,” Claudale Arterburn said.
“I’ve worked a lot with Brian and we’ve talked about it a lot. And I think that’s why he continues to get better — because he does have that forgiveness in him.”
Terrazas’s sentence comes nearly two years after Brian Arterburn was hurt — and on the day of his second wedding anniversary.
Terrazas pleaded guilty to aggravated battery, fleeing from law enforcement and methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia possession charges in November. He was driving the black 2016 Chevy Tahoe that Arterburn had been trying to stop that February afternoon. Police spotted the SUV sitting in the driveway of a house they were conducting surveillance on and followed it after the Wichita car dealership it belonged to said it was stolen.
Terrazas was a known drug dealer but not the target of the department’s surveillance that day. Arterburn was a 25-year veteran of the force at the time.
The prison term he received Monday amounts to nearly 28 1/2 years. He has to serve it consecutively, or back-to-back, with an unrelated case from Ellsworth County, Sedgwick County District Attorney Mac Bennett said. In that case, he received a 133-month sentence — just over 11 years — for bringing drugs into Ellsworth Correctional Facility while he was incarcerated there.
The sentence follows recommendations that grew out of plea negotiations between Bennett and Terrazas’s defense attorney, Mark Sevart.
On Monday afternoon, the courtroom was packed with family, friends and fellow law enforcement officers of the couple as Terrazas learned his fate. Only one person was noticeably absent: Brian Arterburn.
Originally, he had been expected to attend the hearing. But last week, following months of recovery and positive strides, he suffered what Claudale Arterburn called “a setback” connected to the injuries he received when he was run over.
On Saturday, he was hospitalized and underwent surgery.
“He’s still not completely himself,” Claudale Arterburn said Monday afternoon, adding that she’s hopeful he’ll “bounce right back to where he was.”
Before the setback, “he’d been great,” she said.
“He’s hanging in there. He’s starting to get his sense of humor back today.”
Claudale Arterburn told the court during Terrazas’s hearing that they were newlyweds, married for just three weeks when her husband was nearly killed. She is also a Wichita police officer.
A single tear slid down Terrazas’s cheek as she spoke of how their lives were irreparably altered.
“He mattered. He is a good person. ... He did good work,” she said, adding that her husband will never be the same. Yet, she said, “we don’t have hatred in our hearts for you.”
In return, Terrazas said that he didn’t set out to harm a law enforcement officer and that his actions on Feb. 7 “is not who I am. This is not what I do.”
“No apology can fix anything. But I am sorry from the heart. I am heartbroken that I destroyed their lives,” he said.
Sevart, the defense attorney, said ultimately Arterburn and the crash gave Terrazas “an opportunity to become clean” from a life that had long involved drugs.
The judge pointed out that the courts’ attempts to intervene in Terrazas’ life started when he was young — he has prior convictions for burglary and theft as well as for sex crimes as a juvenile — but that he’s continued to be “a force for destruction to innocent people.”
“It’s not too late” to change, Brown urged.
The final thing he said before Terrazas was escorted away by deputies was, “As you step through the door there, it’s the start of your new life.”
This story was originally published January 14, 2019 at 6:59 PM.
