Nick Pasqual sentenced to decades in prison for ex-girlfriend stabbing

A television credit did not shield Nick Pasqual from the consequences of a brutal domestic attack that prosecutors turned into attempted murder, forcible rape and burglary counts. The former How I Met Your Mother actor was sentenced on June 3 to more than three decades in prison after a jury found him guilty in the 2024 stabbing of his ex-girlfriend, Hollywood makeup artist Allie Shehorn.

Jurors concluded Pasqual stabbed Shehorn more than 20 times at her Sunland home, leaving a case that began as an intimate-partner violence complaint and ended with a long prison term. Shehorn later testified in court with scars on her neck and arms and described the violence of that night in painful detail, putting the human cost of the attack at the center of the trial.

The facts prosecutors laid out were stark. Shehorn had reportedly sought a restraining order only days before the attack. A friend later found her bleeding heavily from wounds to her throat, back, chest and wrists. She had to undergo 14 hours of surgery and spent multiple days in the intensive care unit before beginning a long recovery that stretched on for months.

Pasqual allegedly fled California after the stabbing. Authorities detained him near the U.S.-Mexico border in Sierra Blanca, Texas, and the case then moved through arrest, trial and sentencing. By the time the judge imposed the sentence, the legal picture had hardened into a severe conviction: attempted murder, forcible rape, residential burglary and related charges.

That progression is what makes the case so grim. What started with warning signs around a relationship turned into a home invasion-style assault, then into a courtroom record built on Shehorn’s testimony, her injuries and the jury’s findings. Pasqual’s name may have been familiar because of television, but the outcome was defined by the violence done to Shehorn and the decades-long punishment that followed.