I was Minding My Own Business...

I was driving east on 39th on my way for a post-op visit with the hand surgeon when I spotted a gazillion (I counted over 20) police vehicles to my right. Men with guns and bullet-proof vests were rushing about. Hmmm? I ventured down the road a ways, but had to pull over three more times for blaring sirens. It was more than just a little freaky!

After my doctor's visit (all is well with the hand, by the way) I searched the radio to find the answer to the questions that haunted me. Supposedly, a 70-year-old woman had shot and killed a 34-year-old teacher from the Head Start school and then called 911. That must have been seconds before I drove by!

This is what I read later that day --

Police say teacher was killed by former mother-in-law

Published: Sunday, Jan. 31, 2010 12:58 a.m. MST

WEST VALLEY CITY — Through the cell phone, the popping sounded like a light bulb exploding.

Then the phone on the other end seemed to hit plastic.

The engine was still running.

But there was no response.

The likely scenario, Rod Hernandez thought, was that his fiancee had just been in a crash, hit broadside because she was talking on the phone to him.

The horrific truth was yet to be revealed to him, that Tetyana Nikitina, whom he was going to marry Feb. 14, had been gunned down in her car as she was leaving the school where she worked.

For minutes, Rod Hernandez waited on the phone, not daring to hang up. He left the pork chops he had been cooking and began the drive to the Salt Lake CAP Head Start.

Through the phone, he began to hear sirens, then men talking — paramedics.

He was still on the phone when he arrived to find the area around Nikitina's car cordoned off by police tape.

"I found out she got shot," Rod Hernandez said.

Later, at the hospital, he learned Nikitina, 34, had died.

Unified Police officers arrested Nikitina's ex-mother-in-law, Mary Nance Hanson, 70, on investigation of murder.

Hanson is a concealed weapons permit holder, and her most recent address is in Taylorsville. Investigators found her car parked about a mile away from the crime scene, said Unified Police Lt. Don Hutson.

Police say Hanson fired several shots at Nikitina, then reloaded and fired several more rounds.

...Then there was the phone call — that last one — at 3:27 p.m...