A little more than two years after authorities say former Rocky Ford police Officer James Ashby fatally shot an unarmed Jack Jacquez in the back, he was sentenced on Thursday to 16 years in prison.

Ashby, 32, was also ordered to serve five years of parole upon his release and pay a fine of $10,000, according to the Colorado Judicial Department. Restitution in the case can be determined within the next 90 days.

Ashby, convicted in June of second-degree murder in the October 2014 on-duty killing, was awarded 133 days of credit to his prison sentence, which represents the time he has spent in jail since being found guilty. He faced up to 48 years in prison.

Jacquez’s father, Jack Jacquez Sr., said he was disappointed by the sentence and feels it is too lenient.

“It took me a couple of hours after the verdict was read (for it to settle in),” he said Thursday by phone. “I was content at first and then started rethinking the whole situation and realized this man got off easy. If you ever want to commit a murder, go to Rocky Ford.”

He added: “There are no winners in this case. There’s only a degree of sadness and despair.”

When Ashby was arrested a month after Jack Jacquez’s Oct. 12, 2014, slaying, he became the first Colorado police officer in at least two decades to face a murder charge in an on-duty death. A Denver officer was acquitted in a 1992 shooting. It is not clear when the last Colorado police officer was convicted of murder in on an on-duty death, or if that has ever happened.

Investigators say Ashby followed Jacquez, 27, into the home of Jacquez’s mother in the early-morning hours and shot him in the back. Ashby told investigators he thought Jacquez was a burglar, court records show, but officials say he had no reason to believe Jacquez was committing a crime.

Jacquez’s mother, Viola, told The Denver Post that Ashby opened fire on her son inches from her face.

“It was one of those moments where you’re falling off a cliff,” she said in an interview after the shooting.

Investigators found Ashby fired two rounds at Jacquez, one of which severed his spine and pierced his heart and lung before lodging in his chest. A coroner’s report said he was “immediately rendered a paraplegic.”

Ashby was one of several officers at the Rocky Ford Police Department that The Denver Post found had problems in previous law-enforcement jobs or had criminal convictions that might have kept them from being hired at bigger departments or in other states.

Rocky Ford’s former police chief told The Post that Ashby’s records from his previous law enforcement job in Walsenburg, where he had been the subject of several internal affairs investigations, were not reviewed before he was hired. Officials instead relied on verbal recommendations from his former supervisors.

Eight days before shooting Jacquez, Ashby tackled a suspect over a holding cell bench, court documents show. He was found to have violated department policies in that encounter.

Ashby’s lawyers tried to have the former officer’s conviction overturned, claiming there was insufficient evidence to convict their client, errors by the court during the proceedings and several instances of juror misconduct throughout Ashby’s trial. The Colorado Judicial Department says their motion for a retrial was denied by a judge on Oct. 20.

“We do plan to move forward with an appeal,” Carrie Slinkard, one of Ashby’s attorneys, said Thursday.

Earlier this month, Viola Jacquez and the mothers of Jack Jacquez’s three children filed a federal lawsuit against Ashby, former Rocky Ford police Chief Frank Gallegos and the city of Rocky Ford. The lawsuit claims Jack Jacquez’s constitutional protections against wrongful searches and seizures were violated because Ashby stopped the 27-year-old for no legitimate reason and then followed Jacquez into his home, where the fatal shooting occurred.