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PROVO — A 4th District judge told a Springville woman who shot her ex-husband's girlfriend that her case is "one of the most shocking" he had ever seen.
"The terror that you put others through ... is inexcusable," he said.
Although he gave Shaina Cary Hold, 33, consecutive sentences, Judge Thomas Low said he was "a little bit shocked" at how short the sentence could be, estimating she would serve around four years in prison.
Hold was sentenced on Wednesday to one to 15 years in prison for aggravated assault causing serious injury and assault on a police officer with a deadly weapon, second-degree felonies, in addition to zero to five years in prison for aggravated assault, a third-degree felony.
Low said it is only because of the goodness of others, including the officer who responded, that Hold was not sentenced on murder charges.
Charging documents said the woman had been threatening her ex-husband's new girlfriend for months.
According to the charges, Hold had helped carry groceries into her mother's home, where her estranged husband was living temporarily, when she went downstairs with her husband and his new girlfriend; moments later the girlfriend called 911 to report Hold was holding a gun to their heads. The girlfriend was shot in the upper thigh, and as Hold's estranged husband tried to grab the gun, Hold said "no, I'm gonna finish it," police said.
After arriving at the Payson home on Dec. 22, 2022, officers found Hold's estranged husband holding her hands and telling her to drop the gun, but Hold got her hand free and shot herself in the head. Both women were taken to the hospital and survived.
The girlfriend, Natalie Rathbone, recounted crawling upstairs and calling family members to say goodbye at Hold's sentencing. She said the experience constantly plays in her mind.
"It has been an endless road of recovery, not only physically but mentally," she said.
Hold's ex-husband, Cody Hold, said they didn't know whether or not the gun was loaded while Hold threatened to kill both of them and kept them from leaving.
"She didn't bother to stop to think, for one second, the lives that were going to be impacted," he said.
He said her actions make him fear for his childrens' future, and he believes she is a danger to them.
The first officer on the scene, Scott Hall, said at the sentencing that the case still weighs on him, and that he is glad Rathbone survived. He said responding to this scene is the closest he has been to the barrel of a gun, and said it was all very surreal to him.
Hold said she hopes her ex-husband and his fiancee can forgive her. She apologized to the officer for creating the situation he responded to.
"I was on drugs at the time, and I knew I shouldn't have done them but I did it to numb my feelings from everything that was going on at the time," she said.
She expressed a desire to still have her children in her life.
