Accused killer takes stand, admits shooting girlfriend in Vacaville

Sidney Wilson

FAIRFIELD — The Vacaville man standing trial on a murder charge for the shooting death of his longtime girlfriend and the mother of two of their children took the witness stand Thursday.

“Everything was happenin’ hecka fast,” Sidney Wilson testified. “Everything was weird. I didn’t know what was happenin’.”

What was happening was Wilson was shooting and killing Victoria Corral in the garage of her Vacaville home one night in September 2011.

Wilson recalled picking up his gun off a table in the garage and shooting Corral once a few minutes after he coaxed her into the garage, away from the four children in the house, to continue an argument they had been having throughout the day.

“I noticed she’s on the ground. She won’t get up. I don’t know what’s going on. . . . I was walking around. I shot the couch. I was like, ‘Damn.’ I started walking around in circles.”

Wilson recounted getting down on the garage floor and lying next to Corral. He testified she was still breathing.

“I hugged her. ‘Get up, wake up, Vicki,’ I said.”

While Wilson gave clear descriptions of the first gunshot that struck Corral and the third shot that he fired into a nearby couch, he testified that had no recollection of putting his gun against Corral’s head and firing the second shot into the side of her head.

Wilson’s memory was equally cloudy about five previous incidents of domestic violence between the couple that prosecutor Terry Ray said includes his slamming Corral against the floor and walls of the home and choking her until she could not breathe.

Wilson, 34, recalled a phone call from his job in which he was arguing with Corral about her having left one of their children at a friend’s house, but he could not recall telling a co-worker after the phone call that he was going to go “beat her a–.” Wilson was vague on what happened during the 40 minutes that lapsed between the time one of the children called police after the shooting and when he came out of the garage and surrendered to police who had surrounded the house.

“Everything just happened,” he testified.

Wilson ended his time on the witness stand by answering two questions put to him by his defense attorney, Deputy Public Defender Nick Filloy.

“You’re not denying that you shot (her)?”

“No.”

“And you’re not telling jurors that it was an accident?”

“No.”

Filloy has previously claimed the shooting occurred in the heat of the moment. Ray said the shooting was premeditated.

Closing arguments in the trial are expected Friday morning.

Reach Jess Sullivan at 427-6919 or jsullivan@dailyrepublic.net. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jsullivandr.

Jess Sullivan

Jess has covered the criminal justice system in Solano County for several years. He was an embedded reporter in Iraq in 2003.

View all my stories Email Me | Follow Me on Twitter