A man who shot a woman he’d barely met in the face outside a Connecticut bar has apologized to her six years later as a parole board denied his request for release.
Tamara “Tammy” Tkacz, 54, told the board she still has birdshot in her body, numbness in the left side of her head and painful sensations in her arm from the May 2015 shooting outside a West Haven bar, the New Haven Register reported this week.
“Every single time the pain shoots down my arm,” Tkacz said at the virtual hearing Wednesday, she’s reminded “of this man and what he did. It haunts me.”
She was at the bar — where she worked but was off-duty that night — when Edward Corradino came in, she said. She said she, he and others there made some small talk before Corradino left at closing time. Tkacz and her husband stayed to help clean up.
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As the couple left, Corradino fired a shotgun at the two, police said.
Corradino, now 53, said he was in a “blackout” during the shooting and remembers nothing of that night. He pleaded guilty to assault and other charges and was sentenced to 90 months in prison. He has served 85% of his sentence.
Corradino told the board that he wishes he “could take back the pain” that Tkacz, her family and his relatives have suffered. And he apologized to Tkacz, who had been troubled by the fact that he hadn’t expressed remorse before.
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“I want to say I’m sorry. Sorry just sounds so generic,” he said, adding that the suffering he caused her family was “horrific.”
The Connecticut Board of Pardons and Parole decided not to free Corradino, with members saying that he hadn’t completely accepted responsibility for the shooting and that they weren’t satisfied that his post-release plans were solid, among other reasons.
Tkacz thanked him for his apology — and on Facebook, she thanked supporters who wrote to officials to oppose his release.
