In sentencing a 46-year-old Kingston woman to prison this week, Justice Alison Wheeler admitted hers was “a difficult case” to deal with.

Diana L. Hughes had no prior criminal record, and the judge observed that, based on the reports and letters of support submitted to the court on her behalf, she “has a solid history of contributing to the community,” through both paid work and volunteerism and is at heart “a very good person.” Justice Wheeler noted, in particular, that both victims “wholeheartedly support Ms. Hughes” and profess to have suffered no lasting trauma, and she concluded that Hughes’ behaviour on March 19, 2018 — the day that brought her to court — was “profoundly out of character.”

Her actions resulted, however, in Hughes pleading guilty in Kingston’s Ontario Court of Justice earlier this month to two counts of assault with weapons: In the first instance involving an attack on her husband with a guitar and boiling water, and later that same day a second assault on a longtime female friend of the family with a loaded rifle, plus a related charge of using a firearm in the commission of an offence, which attaches a mandatory minimum jail sentence of 12 months.

Consequently, Justice Wheeler said she also had to consider the danger that Hughes’ actions introduced into the community. She was ultimately arrested by Kingston Police officers, weapons drawn, in the parking lot of the Knight’s Inn, and the judge remarked that armed takedowns potentially endanger everyone.

Assistant Crown attorney Gerard Laarhuis urged a sentence of four years, minus pretrial custody, and Hughes’ defence lawyer, Mary Jane Kingston, recommended a 16-month sentence. Justice Wheeler, faced with that disparity, deliberated for a week and ultimately decided that a three-year prison sentence was appropriate, minus the 297 days Hughes had already spent in pretrial custody — which, given the standard enhancement, was counted as equivalent to 446 days of her sentence already elapsed.

That leaves her with exactly two years still to serve, and Justice Wheeler has ordered that her prison sentence be followed by two years of probation, during which she’s required to complete all assessments, counselling and programs of rehabilitation as directed by her probation officer.

At the time of her pleas, the judge was told that Hughes and her husband have been together 26 years and have adult children. But Laarhuis said she’s also had a a long-standing issue with jealousy focused on one of her female friends and has in the past been suspicious of the woman’s friendship with her husband.

He was adamant that “no one is alleging an affair or any romantic relationship” between the two. But that Monday morning in March, he told the judge, Hughes took their truck in for repairs and leapt to what turned out to be a life-changing conclusion when she returned home four hours later and found her friend in her home, alone with her husband.

Hughes thought she’d caught them cheating, Laarhuis explained, and after the accusations erupted, they both left, Hughes’ husband walking a few doors up the street to the home of a neighbour.

He was still there some time later, the judge was told, when Hughes arrived, carrying what she later told Kingston Police was her husband’s favourite guitar and, Laarhuis said, she hit him with it four or five times before one of the neighbours was able to intervene and disarm her. As she was being pushed out of the home’s kitchen, however, Laarhuis said, Hughes spied a pot of water boiling on the stove for Kraft Dinner, snatched it off the burner and threw it at her husband, spattering his face and neck and inflicting some scald injuries, which he noted did not ultimately cause any scarring.

No one called police at that point, however.

The judge was told that came later, at the Knights Inn where police found Hughes sitting in her truck in the parking lot with a loaded Model 60 Marlin .22 rifle on the seat beside her. The safety was on, Justice Wheeler was told, but there was one hollow-point bullet chambered and Laarhuis said even though it was loaded with the wrong-sized ammunition, “it still would have fired,” and Hughes had more bullets in her pocket.

Police later learned from Hughes that after her confrontation with her husband at the neighbours’, she’d returned home, selected the rifle from his gun cabinet, loaded it, and test fired it four times into their backyard fire pit before wrapping it in a camouflage jacket and driving with it to the Princess Street motel.

She told police that she went to the room she thought was the victim’s and knocked, confirming that choice when she heard the woman’s dog inside. She then returned to the truck and retrieved the rifle.

The victim wasn’t alone, however. Her ex-boyfriend was in the room when Hughes entered with the rifle and told the woman she was going to kill her. Police later learned the victim’s ex slammed Hughes against the window and “did what he had to do to get her out.”

Laarhuis said Hughes told police she returned to the parking lot and sat in her truck, reasoning that the woman in the motel room “would have to come out some time.”

She also initially told them, “I wanted to shoot her, kill her. I would have shot her, but apparently I don’t know how to use it [the rifle].” Justice Wheeler was told Hughes initially said she wanted to kill her husband as well and made several remarks that suggested she was contemplating killing herself. But she also vacillated and said, “there’s no way I’d shoot someone to death,” and told officers that she never even pointed the weapon. When police asked her, at one point, what she would have done had her victim’s ex-boyfriend not been in the room, Laarhuis said she speculated that she might have shot the wall

He told the judge that was why she wasn’t charged with attempted murder, describing her state of intention at the time as being “on the cusp” of whether to shoot or not to shoot.

There also turned out to be a twist.

Justice Wheeler was told that Hughes has had problems with depression and alcohol in the past, giving up the latter for an extended period but relapsing following the death of her mother. Then, in 2016, according to her lawyer, she developed a back problem that forced her to give up a job she loved as a school crossing guard.

Kingston said Hughes had back surgery the following year, but with no family doctor to write prescriptions for pain medication, she’d resorted to street drugs, and in 2017 was introduced to crystal meth.

In her decision on sentence, Justice Wheeler noted that Hughes on the day of the offence “had been drinking and bought a 20-piece [roughly a quarter gram] of crystal meth and consumed it by mouth.” She found that, consequently, “Ms. Hughes was in a state of rage fuelled by methamphetamine.”

Reports submitted to the court indicate she’s taken what Justice Wheeler termed “active steps” while in jail to deal with her problems and the judge wished her “good luck.”

syanagisawa@postmedia.com