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

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.

And for the past two days, Rod Hernandez has been left replaying his last hours with Nikitina.

"When I woke up in the morning to go to work, I didn't want to go," he said. "She was there, and I was holding her. When I left, I just wanted her there so bad."

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

Originally, Rod Hernandez and Nikitina had planned to get married in May, but started getting antsy and moved the wedding up to Valentine's Day.

He now wishes he had married her sooner.

"I'm never going to meet another woman like that," he said.

Family members gathered at Hernandez's West Valley home Saturday to mourn Nikitina, who was known as Tanya.