A woman pleaded guilty Tuesday morning in federal court in Pittsburgh to voluntary manslaughter and discharging a firearm during the commission of a crime of violence in the fatal shooting of FBI agent Sam Hicks in 2008, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.
Under the plea agreement, Christina Korbe was sentenced to 15 years and 10 months in prison, the paper reported, adding that she entered her plea before a standing-room-only courtroom.
Korbe shot and killed Hicks, who along with other law enforcement agents, had come to arrest her husband Robert Korbe, a drug dealer, who is now serving a 25-year prison term.
She had claimed that she shot Hicks, 33, after thinking someone was breaking in the home, and that she wanted to protect her family. Hicks was the first to enter the home.
The Post-Gazette reported that Hick’s widow Brooke Hicks spoke after sentencing, saying:
“The most important thing was she stood up in that courtroom and accepted responsibility for shooting Sam.”She added that she was relieved Korbe can’t appeal, though ” everyone in here would have loved to see her do more time.”
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that Korbe spoke in court and admitted she was wrong. And her family provided to the media a written statement from Kobe, which said: “To the Hicks family, I am deeply, deeply sorry, more than you’ll ever know.
“There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about your son, your husband, your father, your brother, your friend, and wish it were me instead of him.”
But she also blamed the FBI tactics for the ordeal.
“I have never denied that I was the one who fired that fateful shot that morning and am taking on that responsibility. I still have not heard the FBI taking any responsibility in all of this because they refuse to accept that their unnecessary actions played an integral part,” she wrote.
She went on to blame the FBI for harassing her family, fabricating evidence and threatening witnesses, the paper reported.
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