A Los Angeles jury found "How I Met Your Mother" actor Nick Pasqual guilty of attempted murder Friday for breaking into his ex-girlfriend's home and stabbing her an estimated 20 times, an attack that came just days after the victim had obtained a restraining order against him.
The 36-year-old actor was convicted on all counts by a San Fernando, California, jury. Beyond attempted murder, those charges included first-degree residential burglary with a person present and injuring a spouse, cohabitant, or girlfriend. The New York Post reported the jury also found Pasqual guilty of forcible rape.
Pasqual now awaits sentencing. His hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, June 2, and he faces a possible life sentence.
The victim, Allie Shehorn, is a Hollywood makeup artist. The timeline of what happened to her should trouble anyone who believes the justice system's first job is to protect the public from known threats.
PEOPLE magazine reported that Pasqual was first arrested for domestic violence on May 18, 2024. He was released on $50,000 bond. Shehorn then filed a restraining order against him. Days later, on May 23, 2024, Pasqual broke into her Sunland, California, home and attacked her with a knife.
Jed Dornoff, a friend of Shehorn's, told PEOPLE the sequence was chillingly direct: "as soon as he paid his bail, he came after her."
That one sentence captures a failure that no amount of legal paperwork could fix. A man arrested for domestic violence walked out of custody on bond, and within days his victim was fighting for her life.
Shehorn took the stand during trial. She bore visible scars on her neck and arms as she recounted the night Pasqual forced his way into her home. As Fox News Digital reported, she described Pasqual breaking through a locked door.
"I locked the door and he just started punching holes in that door and broke that open. I just ran into the bathroom because I thought there's another lock on that door."
It wasn't enough. Pasqual reached her. The Los Angeles Times reported that he stabbed Shehorn an estimated 20 times. Her injuries covered her throat, back, chest, and wrists.
Christine White, a friend of Shehorn's, found her after the attack. White told the Los Angeles Times what she said to the bleeding woman: "I just told her to keep her hand on her throat to stop the bleeding."
Shehorn underwent 14 hours of surgery. She spent multiple days in the intensive care unit. The Washington Times reported she was hospitalized for more than a week.
The sheer brutality of the injuries, 20-plus stab wounds, emergency surgery lasting the better part of a day, days in the ICU, makes the earlier $50,000 bond look like a formality rather than a safeguard. This was not a case where warning signs were subtle. The man had just been arrested for domestic violence against the same woman.
After the attack, Pasqual allegedly fled California. He was detained at a U.S.-Mexico border checkpoint in Sierra Blanca, Texas. The exact date of his detention was not specified in court records, but the sequence is clear: he attacked his ex-girlfriend, then headed for the border.
Sierra Blanca sits along a well-known corridor for border crossings in far west Texas. That Pasqual was picked up there suggests he was attempting to leave the country entirely. The case is a stark reminder of how quickly violent offenders can try to disappear when the system gives them room to move, a pattern seen in other attempted-murder cases where suspects exploit gaps in custody or supervision.
The core failure here deserves a closer look. On May 18, 2024, police arrested Pasqual for domestic violence. A judge or magistrate set bond at $50,000. He paid it and walked. Five days later, his ex-girlfriend was stabbed 20 times in her own home.
Shehorn did everything right. She sought legal protection. She got a restraining order. None of it mattered because the man who had already been arrested for attacking her was free on a modest bond.
This is the kind of case that should haunt every jurisdiction still treating domestic violence arrests as routine bookings. A restraining order is a piece of paper. It works only if the person it targets respects the law, or if the system keeps that person away from the victim long enough for the paper to mean something. Here, neither happened.
Violent crimes against women in domestic settings continue to expose the gap between the legal system's promises and its follow-through. A recent home-invasion case in nearby Burbank underscored the same vulnerability, victims attacked in the places where they should feel safest.
Pasqual's credits include work on the long-running CBS sitcom "How I Met Your Mother." His conviction adds another name to a growing list of entertainment-industry figures facing serious criminal allegations. Other actors have faced repeated arrests in recent years, and the pattern raises fair questions about whether fame and industry connections insulate people from the kind of scrutiny that might have flagged escalating behavior sooner.
None of that excuses the system's failure here. Pasqual's celebrity status, such as it was, did not cause the $50,000 bond. But the broader culture of leniency in Los Angeles courts, a jurisdiction that has spent years experimenting with reduced bail and softer pretrial detention standards, created the conditions under which a man arrested for domestic violence could walk free and nearly take a woman's life days later.
Pasqual's sentencing hearing is set for June 2. With convictions on attempted murder, first-degree residential burglary, and the additional counts, he faces the possibility of life in prison. The Washington Times noted prosecutors secured guilty verdicts on all charges.
For Shehorn, the verdict closes one chapter but not the damage. She carries the scars, visible on the stand, of an attack that nearly ended her life. Fourteen hours of surgery. Days in intensive care. A restraining order that arrived too late to matter.
The jury did its job. The question is why the system didn't do its job five days earlier, when it had the chance to keep a known domestic abuser behind bars instead of handing him a receipt for $50,000 and sending him on his way.
Accountability arrived in that San Fernando courtroom. It just arrived covered in scars it didn't have to leave.
