A Texas woman with a volatile work history was arrested last month for allegedly shooting her boss in the head over a work dispute and then hitting him with the tractor-trailer she was driving.
Patricia Ruth Holt, 57, reportedly had difficulties with the 47-year-old manager of the trucking yard where she worked, Carl Joseph Donaldson, before the fatal incident on July 24, the Daily Freeman reported.
Holt reportedly told arresting officers that she had been planning to kill Donaldson “for months” and that “they have been f****** with her for too long,” a police report said. She reportedly told the officers she hadn’t been paid in two years, although she only started working at Hutchins Trucking Yard in June.
According to police, Holt threatened to shoot other people at the scene who were filming the shooting incident before she led authorities on a slow-speed chase away from the yard. Eventually, cops deployed spike strips to stop her, but she barricaded herself inside the truck’s cab for nearly four hours.
After her arrest, she told police she considered turning the gun on her self or attempting “suicide by cop.”
Donaldson’s wife, Tonya Donaldson, told the Daily Freeman that Holt had been problematic from the time she was hired and had been reprimanded for speeding.
“She immediately got on the defense, so that was the first clue that ‘uh oh, we’re going to have a problem with this one every time we have to call her for coaching,’” she said.
Holt also screamed and cursed at her husband for a reminder about the rules of the road.
“It was just normal stuff,” Tonya Donaldson said. “He would do it all the time.”
She told the paper she was at the yard when the shooting took place. Holt had gotten into an argument with a customer in Waco, and Donaldson told her to either apologize to the customer and pick up the load or empty the truck and leave it in Waco. But she drove back to the yard in Tyler, where she began driving the truck — aggressively — in circles.
“She was focused on Carl, her target was Carl,” Donaldson said. “She tried to hit Carl twice.”
Carl Donaldson climbed on running board to open the driver’s door, she said, but it was locked.
“At that time, I had my back turned and I heard a pop,” Donaldson said. “I turned around and looked and I see my husband flying through the air and falling on the ground.”
Holt accelerated and hit Carl Donaldson as he lay on the ground, she said.
In the wake of the shooting, Holt’s previous arrest — at her high school in New York in 1986 — was uncovered. In that incident, she was angry because an English teacher had removed her from class because of “behavioral problems,” the Daily Freeman said. After a meeting with the school district’s director of special services, Holt , then 18, went home, grabbed a gun, and came back to the school, looking for the teacher.
The teacher wasn’t in the classroom, so Holt went to the faculty lounge where two other teachers took her down and wrestled the gun away until police arrived.
She was initially charged with attempted murder, attempted assault, criminal trespass, and possession of a weapon. She pleaded guilty to attempted assault and was sentenced to five years probation. She was also ordered to undergo inpatient psychiatric treatment.
Holt has been charged with first degree murder in Donaldson’s death and is being held on a $1 million bond.
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[Featured image: Patricia Ruth Holt/Dallas County Sheriff’s Office]
