UTAH COUNTY — It will be 27 years before a teen convicted in the death of Utah County Sheriff’s Sgt. Cory Wride will get her first parole hearing.
Meagan Grunwald is serving a life sentence for her role in the murder. On Tuesday, the parole board said she will get her first parole hearing in the year 2042.
At 18 years old, Grunwald was convicted by a jury earlier this year in the murder of Wride and the wounding of Deputy Greg Sherwood.
Wride encountered Grunwald — then 17 — and her boyfriend, 27-year-old Jose Angel Garcia Jauregui, stopped along a roadside in Eagle Mountain on Jan. 30, 2014.
The defense claimed Grunwald had just learned that Garcia had a warrant out for his arrest, and that he killed Wride and forced her to drive in a high-speed chase that spanned two counties and resulted in the shooting of Sherwood, a carjacking near Nephi and a shootout with police that ultimately ended with Garcia dead.
While prosecutors conceded that Grunwald never pulled the trigger, they said she was not a hostage as the defense had claimed.
Prosecutors say she was a willing accomplice, acting out of love and a desire to keep her relationship going. Even though she did not pull the trigger, Grunwald faced aggravated murder because Utah law does not allow for aiding and abetting.
