A Texas doctor has been sentenced to one year and a day in federal prison for threatening to kill her former husband, a soldier stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Tanyatorn Ghanjanasak, 35, also was sentenced to three years of supervised release, according to a press release last week from the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina.
Ghanjanasak, who was convicted of one count of interstate threats to injure, pleaded guilty March 5 to sending her then-husband several threatening text messages over a period of two years. She also threatened two other individuals over a period of several months, investigators found, using anonymous messaging applications from her home and workplace, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
Ghanjanasak’s former husband, who is identified in court documents as David Chavez, met Ghanjanasak in 2014 while he was stationed at Fort Drum, New York, according to a criminal complaint filed with the court by the FBI.
He moved to Fort Bragg in April 2016, and the couple was married two months later. Ghanjanasak left shortly after the wedding for Cincinnati, Ohio, to obtain her medical degree, the FBI said.
Between August 2016 and June 2017, Chavez would visit Ghanjanasak on long weekends, as often as his command would allow, in Ohio, according to the FBI’s complaint.
But the strange text messages began as early as June 2015, and they came from various phone numbers. Chavez did not recognize the numbers or the names of the women who were purportedly sending the messages, according to the FBI, so he initially didn’t save the messages.
In March 2016, he again began to receive strange text messages, the FBI said.
“Hi it’s Ariel from Saturday [sic]” with a smiley emoji.
A day later: “You know it’s rude not to respond!”
“I know you’re lonely and feeling unappreciated [sic]”
“I know your wife doesn’t understand you [sic]”
Five months later, while visiting Ghanjanasak at her home in Ohio, Chavez tried to drive his car but discovered that the brake lines had been cut, according to the U.S. attorney’s office. He also became ill on that trip and believed he had been drugged.
Shortly after that trip, the text messages resumed and slowly escalated, according to the FBI.
“The brakes and the poisons were me and you dumb ass can’t figure it out,” she wrote in January 2017, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
Chavez also received this message at least 35 times: “I want you dead [sic]”
A month later, she sent another message: “There’s a surprise coming for you which is to die for. I hope you like it.”
She even included a smiley face emoticon.
The following weekend, while on another visit to Ohio, Chavez suffered a second incident where he felt he had been drugged and almost fell down a flight of stairs, according to the U.S. attorney.
Ghanjanasak, who authorities said had a medical degree and was practicing medicine at the time of the threats, sent another anonymous message immediately after that incident.
“Did you like your beer?!?!?!?!?”
Chavez and Ghanjanasak were divorced in June 2017, according to the FBI. Three months later, during an interview with the FBI, Ghanjanasak confessed to sending the threatening text messages to her ex-husband and two other people, according to the criminal complaint.
Michelle Tan is the editor of Army Times and Air Force Times. She has covered the military for Military Times since 2005, and has embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Haiti, Gabon and the Horn of Africa.
