Woman Sentenced for Killing Ex With Animal Tranquilizer

Attack was partially caught on dashcam video
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 4, 2024 2:00 AM CDT
Woman Sentenced for Killing Ex With Animal Tranquilizer
Amanda Hovanec   (Auglaize County Sheriff's Office)

An Ohio woman who killed her estranged husband via a fatal dose of animal tranquilizer was sentenced this week to 40 years behind bars. Amanda Hovanec, 37, and husband Timothy were navigating a divorce when, in 2020, she started keeping their three daughters from him despite a court order allowing him visitation. In April 2022, a judge ordered not only that the children be allowed to visit their father, but that they live with him for two months that summer, People reports. It was on April 24 of that year that, after he dropped the kids off following a visit and Hovanec's mom took them inside for a "surprise" their mother had promised them, Hovanec attacked her ex with an injection of M-99, also known as Etorphine, which is about 1,000 times stronger than morphine, NBC News reports.

The attack was partially caught on dashcam video from Timothy Hovanec's car, in which he can be heard saying, "What the heck are you doing? Did you just assault me? Get off of me." Amanda Hovanec can be seen pulling on his shirt and hands as he tries to grab his phone and then knocking the phone out of his hands; she then moved him to the ground and held him there on the driveway until he went limp, authorities say. She later confessed to killing her ex so that she wouldn't have to send her kids to live with him during the summer, and admitted to burying his body in the woods near her home. She pleaded guilty to charges including distributing a controlled substance that resulted in death. Her mother and her lover were charged with helping to dispose of the body, and her lover was also charged with getting the drug that killed Hovanec. (More Ohio stories.)

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