Kristopher Love, the trigger man in the 2015 murder of Dallas dentist Kendra Hatcher, was sentenced to death Wednesday in a Dallas County court.
Love was convicted of capital murder on Thursday in the shooting death of Hatcher, who was gunned down in the parking garage of her Uptown Dallas apartment complex. The punishment phase of the trial began Monday.
The 34-year-old Love is the first person in Dallas County to get the death penalty since 2013.
Love was the accused gunman in the alleged murder-for-hire plot. Authorities said Brenda Delgado, the ex-girlfriend of Hatcher's boyfriend, paid Love and another woman in drugs and money to carry out the murder.
Delgado also faces a capital murder charge in the shooting, and she is awaiting trial.
Hatcher had started dating another doctor, Ricardo Paniagua, about six months before she was killed. Prosecutors said what Hatcher didn’t know was that Delgado wanted him back and was willing to kill for him.
"Evidence will show Brenda could not let go, she followed him and stalked him,” Prosecutor Kevin Brooks said in opening statements.
Prosecutors said Delgado plotted Hatcher’s murder.
They claimed that Delgado tried to hire several people, including her roommate to kill her.
“She said she would buy me a car and give me $12,000," the roommate, Jennifer Escobar, said.
No one would do it until they say she met a woman named Crystal Cortes, who connected Delgado to Love.
"Kristopher Love says yes for drugs and money and starts surveillance,” Brooks said.
On the day of the murder, Love and Cortes waited in a Jeep outside of Hatcher's apartment, Cortes testified. Surveillance footage presented at trial showed the Jeep in a parking lot across the street from Hatcher's apartment.
Inside the parking garage, Love got out of the Jeep, and then Cortes heard Hatcher scream, "Help, help, help me!"
"And then I hear the shots fired," Cortes said.
Cortes said she later called Delgado, who asked "if the task was complete, meaning, did we commit the murder?"
"And I said yes," Cortes said.