PHOENIX, Arizona — The man who shot a young Phoenix police officer eight times and left him fighting for his life in December 2021 will spend the rest of his own life in prison. Essa Williams was sentenced on Tuesday afternoon, October 27, 2026, to two consecutive life sentences plus an additional 25 years for the shooting of Phoenix Police Officer Tyler Moldovan, AZFamily (KPHO/KTVK) reported from the courtroom.
Source: AZFamily (KPHO/KTVK)
More than a dozen people spoke in court before the judge handed down the sentence, AZFamily reported. Moldovan's family and fellow law-enforcement officers filled the courtroom in support of the officer, whose recovery from the shooting has stretched across nearly five years of surgery, hospital care and daily therapy.
The night of December 14, 2021
On December 14, 2021, Officer Moldovan was nine months into the job when he and his partner, Officer Zach Johnson, responded to a call about cars doing donuts near 19th Avenue and Camelback Road in Phoenix. Phoenix police said Williams ran off after being spotted doing donuts with another driver, and officers found him in a covered patio inside an apartment complex near 15th Avenue and Camelback Road. There, Williams shot Moldovan eight times, including a shot to the head.
Court documents say Williams was also planning to shoot Johnson before Johnson tackled him and took him into custody. At the trial, Johnson testified that he turned around, did not see his partner, sprinted back toward the gunshots to where he last saw him, and found Williams on top of Moldovan.
A recovery Moldovan is still living through
Moldovan was given little chance to live, but he survived. He spent months in hospital undergoing extensive rehabilitation and daily therapy. Testifying at trial, he described gunshot wounds to his head — one to the right side behind the ear and one to the left side behind the ear, which caused brainstem injuries — as well as wounds to his shoulder, thumb, wrist, hip and legs. His earliest memory after the shooting is from March 2022, three months later.
Speaking first among the victim-impact statements at sentencing, Moldovan used a walker to reach the stand. AZFamily reported that he has had 20 outpatient doctors, seven surgeries and countless procedures, that he is relearning how to breathe and blink, and that he lives with constant burning pain. He told the court every day feels like a struggle he cannot seem to win, said he hopes one day to return to some kind of normal life, and asked that Williams spend the rest of his life in prison.
"Our life sentence started the minute he raised his gun"
Chelsea Moldovan, the officer's wife, asked for the maximum sentence, telling the court that their life sentence began the moment Williams raised his gun. She spent the couple's first Christmas as a married couple in an intensive-care recliner beside her husband, and she told the court their dreams of becoming parents were shattered by the shooting.
The officer's mother, Adina Moldovan, told Williams that the family forgives him, saying the God who saved her son's life taught them to forgive. But she also said she saw no remorse from him in court, describing him as smiling and chewing gum during the proceedings.
Williams says he acted in self-defence; prosecutors say he fired while trying to escape
Williams addressed the judge himself before sentence was passed. He maintained that he acted in self-defence out of fear — a Black man, at 2 a.m. in December 2021, being followed by a car with no lights — and said he watched Moldovan reach for his weapon and defended his own life. He argued that police created the whole situation, saying members of the squad skipped a safe, simple traffic stop and instead stirred things up and frightened him into reacting. He also said he is thankful Tyler Moldovan is still alive, apologised that it happened, and asked for forgiveness from Tyler, from Tyler's family and from his own family.
Prosecutors gave a sharply different account. They told the court Williams asked the officers what they were going to do and whether they were going to lock him up, before firing 15 rounds at Moldovan, and they said the evidence showed he shot the officer while attempting to escape. Defence lawyers objected to the prosecution's delivery, asked the judge to recuse himself, and made repeated requests for a mistrial during the case, arguing inflammatory language and bias; those requests were denied.
In August 2026 a jury convicted Williams of attempted first-degree murder of a law-enforcement officer, two counts of aggravated assault and two counts of misconduct involving weapons, after deliberating for less than one hour, according to AZFamily and a FOX 10 Phoenix report sourced to the Maricopa County Attorney's Office. Williams later waived the aggravation phase of the case, avoiding a separate jury hearing on factors that could have increased his sentence.
A record that put guns in his hands illegally
At the time of the shooting Williams was a parolee with nine prior felony convictions and was legally banned from possessing a gun. His mother and his girlfriend later pleaded guilty to providing him with firearms, although none of those weapons was the one used to shoot Moldovan. In the mother's federal case, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) said Erika Williams straw-purchased a Taurus G3 pistol in Phoenix on September 3, 2020, for her son, only months after his release from the Arizona Department of Corrections; she was sentenced in federal court to 10 months in prison.
Source: ATF
Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, who as a prosecutor was one of those who responded to the scene in the early morning of the shooting — before she became county attorney — said she was pleased with the sentence and that it sends a message that violence against police will not be tolerated in the Valley. Phoenix Police Chief Matt Giordano also welcomed the sentence, AZFamily reported. Mitchell said that in retrospect Williams, on probation for felonies, should not have been on the streets.
What happens next
Williams now begins serving the consecutive life terms in Arizona's prison system, closing a court process that began with the December 2021 shooting, ran through a trial that opened in July 2026 and a guilty verdict in August, and ended with Tuesday's sentencing. No appeal was mentioned in court reporting of the hearing. For Moldovan, there is no closing date: his therapy and medical treatment continue, and, as his wife told the court, the family's own sentence runs alongside the one imposed on the man who shot him.