Ex-wife’s friend: Gunman distant after wedding

Revelation was devastating
The revelation devastated Sylvia Pardo — who had hoped to have a child with him — and she told her husband she wanted a divorce. He barely reacted, she would later tell Jauregui, and calmly moved her belongings to the curb and told her to move out.

"How can you marry somebody and not know a secret, that there was a child, a hidden child?" Jauregui said. "She thought she was his first wife and would have his first child. She wanted his child."

After Sylvia Pardo moved out, she talked less and less about her estranged husband, but the two women were closer than ever. Jauregui last saw her friend four days before she died — and two days after her divorce was finalized.

The two women and another friend spent all day shopping in Chino Hills before going for drinks and dinner and then attending a company party at Sylvia Pardo's brother's house. All of Sylvia Pardo's extended family was there, Jauregui recalled, and they huddled around a fire pit together eating pozole and reminiscing about old times as the party rolled on around them. Sylvia Pardo was looking forward to putting the divorce behind her, and they made plans to spend New Year's Eve together.

"She really reveled in the fact that we'd been friends 30 years. She said, 'Isn't that special? Isn't that great?'" Jauregui said.

Last-minute change of plans
The family invited Jauregui, her husband and their two teenage children to their traditional Christmas Eve bash in Covina, but at the last minute Jauregui and her husband decided to attend midnight Mass instead.

Jauregui now shudders when she thinks how things could have turned out differently. She keeps tracing the floor plan of her best friend's childhood home in her mind, wondering where she was when she was gunned down — and knowing she wouldn't have been far from her soul mate's side.

"If he didn't care about her or her mom and dad, he certainly didn't care about me. We wouldn't have made it out alive. We wouldn't have had a chance," Jauregui said, mascara streaking down her cheeks from her tears.

"It just goes through your mind: What was she thinking at that moment when she looked in his eyes?"

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