San Diego : Police Officer Will Stand Trial in Wife’s Killing

A San Diego police officer accused of killing his wife during a quarrel was ordered Monday to stand trial on a murder charge.

Pablo Agrio, 29, was bound over for trial after a preliminary hearing conducted by San Diego Municipal Judge Frederic A. Link.

Link commented that the case seemed more like a manslaughter than murder case.

Alma Agrio, 23, a San Diego County Sheriff’s Department trainee, was shot in the back of the head March 26 in the couple’s Paradise Hills home. Link said Alma Agrio’s blood alcohol level was 0.26% at the time of her slaying--more than twice the legal limit for intoxication.

Before binding Agrio over for trial in Superior Court, Link said he had read a 42-page, tape-recorded transcript of an interview with Agrio hours after the shooting. Link said Agrio became angry at his wife because she came home an hour and a half late and had been drinking.

During the argument, Alma Agrio locked herself in their bedroom, but her husband kicked the door in. She grabbed a gun from a cabinet and pointed it at her husband, according to Agrio’s account. The gun fired as he tried to grab it, Agrio said in the transcript.

However, Deputy Dist. Atty. Craig Rooten said it was not a sudden quarrel that sparked the violence.

“He (Agrio) set the situation up. He was going to abuse her that night as he did before,” said Rooten. Rooten described Agrio as “the aggressor at all times” on the night of the slaying.

Agrio’s attorney, Edmundo Espinosa, said Alma Agrio spat on her husband and called him names during the argument.

Espinosa called the slaying an event that occurred on the spur of the moment, in the heat of passion. “I think it’s accidental,” the defense attorney said .

Agrio, who worked with the Police Department’s Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, remains free on $60,000 bail.

Link set Agrio’s Superior Court arraignment for June 7.