Top inset: Shannon Hiott (GoFundMe). Bottom inset: Chance Donohoe (WCMH/YouTube). Background: The location where Hiott was killed in Columbus, Ohio (WCMH/YouTube).
An Ohio man was sentenced to life in prison after admitting he busted into his ex-girlfriend’s home after a breakup and stabbed her 30 times, slitting her throat to “speed up the process.”
Chance Donohoe, 27, was sentenced on Thursday to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 31 years in the death of Shannon Hiott, 29. He pleaded guilty last month to aggravated murder and gross abuse of a corpse, prosecutors said in a news release.
Hiott’s mother, Jamie Hiott, lashed out at the defendant in court, the Columbus Dispatch reported.
“How scared she must have been. You are a foot taller and 100 pounds heavier,” she said, the newspaper reported. “You had all that time to change your mind, but you’re a monster.”
In a sentencing memo arguing for leniency, Donohoe’s lawyer said he was under the influence of marijuana, methamphetamine, and cocaine and had consumed a significant amount of alcohol at the time of the killing.
In a letter attached to the sentencing memo, his mother, Ashley Radca, said her son has had many struggles in life, including being raised by a single mother whose biological father was absent and who has been in and out of counseling since he was 5.
“I will never fully understand how my son was capable of doing the horrific things he did the night he ended Shannon’s life,” she wrote. “It was so entirely out of character and not like anything he had ever done in the past. What he did was beyond terrible, and he must pay a consequence for his actions.”
Hiott was killed on Aug. 29. Donohoe forced his way into her residence in the 1400 block of Berkeley Road in Columbus and stabbed her, prosecutors said. She’d been stabbed 30 times, the Columbus Dispatch reported.
After the stabbing, he fled to his mother’s home in Powell, about 20 miles north, NBC local affiliate WCMH reported. There, he called 911, confessed and surrendered to police, officials said in a news release.
“I can only imagine what was going through Shannon’s mind as he busts in her door and starts stabbing her,” Assistant Franklin County Prosecutor Dan Lenert said, the Dispatch reported. “He told the police he slit her throat to speed up the process. This was not drugs, this is not ketamine, this is not methamphetamine, this is not cocaine, this is someone that’s angry. He’s pissed off about posts being made about him on social media. He’s upset about their breakup and he goes to her house that night and sees a vehicle from another man that he knows that he recognizes.”
The victim’s sister, Lana Hiott, told local ABC/FOX affiliate WSYX that Donohoe had stolen money and prescription medication from her, and she had asked him to move out a week earlier.
“I stopped trying to be the catalyst of change in my relationship, and the truth was revealed. I am so much happier than I was a couple weeks ago,” Shannon Hiott posted on Facebook days before she was killed, according to the outlet.
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