A woman shot at Wyler’s Pub and Brew told the court her life changed forever.
GREELEY, Colo. — A woman wounded in a 2024 bar shooting told a Weld County courtroom she believed she briefly died before a judge sentenced Jimmy Cazares to 96 years in prison.
The victim’s statement became the emotional center of a case built on 59 shots, two surviving women and a confrontation that prosecutors said began with Cazares being kicked out of Wyler’s Pub and Brew for fighting. Weld County District Court Judge Annette Kundelius imposed the sentence April 15 after a February jury verdict. Cazares, 33, was found guilty of attempted murder counts, weapons charges, criminal mischief and drug-related counts. Prosecutors said the injured employee and another woman in the direct line of fire both survived.
The woman who was shot was working at the bar when the gunfire entered the business on Nov. 30, 2024. Police later said she had been struck multiple times, including once in the neck. At sentencing, she did not speak in the language of statutes or charge numbers. She spoke about the moment the ordinary space around her turned into a place of panic and injury. “My life changed forever that night,” she said. “I never could have imagined I was being shot at. I firmly believe I died for a brief moment.” The statement came after jurors had already decided guilt and before the judge announced the prison term. It placed the court’s attention on what the shooting did to the people inside the bar, not only on the defendant’s conduct outside it.
Police were called to Wyler’s Pub and Brew in the 2300 block of 27th Street after reports of a shooting. When officers arrived, they found the wounded female employee and identified a second victim who had been in the direct line of fire but had not been struck by bullets. Investigators said Cazares had been kicked out about 40 minutes earlier because of fighting. He returned and fired into the business from outside, prosecutors said. The number of rounds, 59, became one of the defining details of the case. It was not a single shot after a dispute. It was a sustained burst of gunfire into a building where people remained inside. Prosecutors did not publicly identify the victims after sentencing, and the public summary did not give the exact number of customers or employees present when the rounds were fired.
The charges reflected the way prosecutors described the danger. Cazares was convicted of two counts of attempted murder after deliberation involving a deadly weapon and two counts of attempted murder due to extreme indifference with a deadly weapon. The jury also found him guilty of possession of a weapon by a previous offender, possession of an unserialized weapon and criminal mischief causing damage of more than $20,000 but not more than $100,000. Two drug-related convictions were added to the verdicts. Those counts showed how the case moved from the scene to the courtroom: from emergency response, to investigation, to trial evidence, to a sentencing range that prosecutors said allowed up to 134 years in prison. The judge chose 96 years, still a term measured in decades rather than years.
Deputy District Attorney Lacy Wells argued that the survival of both victims did not reduce the seriousness of the conduct. “It’s only by the grace of God that no one was killed that night,” Wells said. “He gunned down two women at a local, community establishment and clearly has no respect for human life.” The phrase “local, community establishment” carried weight in Greeley, where the bar was not described by prosecutors as an abstract crime scene but as a place where people worked and gathered. The public record released after sentencing did not include comments from Cazares or his attorney. It also did not state whether the defense plans to challenge the conviction or sentence. What remained clear was the court’s final order: 96 years in the Colorado Department of Corrections.
The damage in the case was measured in several ways. There were the wounds to the employee, including the neck injury. There was the trauma to the second victim, who prosecutors said stood in the path of the rounds. There was property damage high enough to support a felony criminal mischief conviction in the $20,000 to $100,000 range. There was also the public violence of a shooting tied to a bar fight, a sequence prosecutors said unfolded in less than an hour. Wells told the court that the harm did not end when the weapon stopped firing. “Damage didn’t stop when the bullets stopped,” she said. “These victims of this horrific and senseless crime will live with the mental, emotional and physical damage the rest of their lives.”
The sentencing closed a major chapter for the victims, but it did not erase the unanswered details outside the public summary. Officials did not release a full timeline of the trial testimony, the complete ballistics findings or any surveillance evidence that may have been shown to jurors. They also did not provide a detailed account of how Cazares was identified, arrested or linked to the weapon. The facts made public focused on the core sequence: fight, removal from the bar, return about 40 minutes later, 59 shots, two victims, convictions and a 96-year sentence. In the courtroom, that timeline was enough for prosecutors to argue that the attack showed deliberation and extreme indifference. For the victims, it marked the night their workplace became the scene of lasting physical and emotional harm.
Jimmy Cazares has been sentenced to state prison after the April 15 hearing. The case now moves into the post-sentencing stage, with any further action dependent on court filings after the judgment and the transfer of custody to the Colorado Department of Corrections.
Author note: Last updated May 9, 2026.