Martha Clark’s face was blown away by a shotgun.
And today, Clark stood at a podium in Denver District Court and told Judge Christina Habas that the man who shot her at pointblank range, Thomas McBride, 50, “shot me in cold blood.”
“He will never understand the pain he caused me when he put the shotgun to my face and shot me. The doctors didn’t think I would make it; he didn’t want me to make it,” Clark said.
Although she survived the blast, she has undergone extensive reconstructive surgery. The damage caused by the gun required surgeons to reconstruct her face with six metal plates, bone from the top of her skull and skin from her thigh.
Habas described what happened to Clark as “unspeakable cruelty.”
“You were a really beautiful woman,” the judge said. As far as McBride, she rejected his claim the shotgun blast was “accidental.”
“I’m here for one purpose and one purpose only – to determine what happened that night,” she told McBride. “This was no accident. My purpose is to bring a sense of justice to to the community.”
With that, Habas ordered McBride to serve 48 years for attempted first-degree murder and 32 years for first-degree assault, the sentences to run concurrently.
Prosecutor David Lamb praised Clark for her courage saying the story that unfolded on Christmas Eve 2005, when clark was shot, was one of “true heroism.”
During the trial, Clark testified that McBride, a man she had known for years, had gone from a nice, caring man to an abusive bully who repeatedly hit, slugged and strangled her, threatening her with his shotgun.
Clark said she had always been faithful to McBride but he warned her that if she ever left him she didn’t want to know what was going to happen to her.
On the night he blew her face off, she said she had prepared for bed, when McBride suddenly appeared in the bedroom, made eye contact and then fired.
What resulted, Lamb told the judge, was a “truly devastating, devastating injury” caused by a man who feared losing Clark.
“His fear of losing her controlled his obsession and his anger,” Lamb said.
McBride’s two children, Thomas McBride III and Elizabeth McBride, told the judge that their father has always been a wonderful man.
“My dad is…my best friend,” McBride’s son said. “My dad is everything. He is the most loving, caring supportive person in the world.”
As he walked by his handcuffed dad, he reached out and softly whispered: “I love you dad.”
Elizabeth, who is deaf, signed that her father “is still a very caring person.”
But Zenobia Shaw, Clark’s daughter, said that what happened to her mother has traumatized her and her children.
“They couldn’t believe that someone would hurt their grandmother like this,” she said of her children. “Her (Clark’s) mouth hurts so bad. For somebody to shoot her in the face was so crazy.”
McBride made a brief statement, but he spoke so softly most in the packed courtroom couldn’t hear him.
Staff writer Howard Pankratz can be reached at 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com.
