A woman who wounded two men by stabbing them behind an Ocean Beach restaurant was sentenced Monday to four years in state prison.
Jana Halaska, 30, pleaded guilty to charges of assault with a deadly weapon for the April 13, 2025, stabbings, which occurred around 1 a.m. behind Hodad’s on Newport Avenue.
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The two victims, both of whom suffered punctured lungs in the attack, were strangers to Halaska. Halaska initially faced an attempted murder charge in the case.
Prosecution sentencing papers state that just before the stabbings, one of the victims got into a physical altercation with a different woman, which culminated in that victim kicking the woman.
The victim then walked away, but witnesses heard Halaska say, “That’s not how you treat a lady,” prosecutors allege.
Halaska followed the victim to the Hodad’s parking lot, then swung a knife at him unprovoked, Deputy District Attorney Savanah Howe alleged in her sentencing papers. A male friend of Halaska’s tackled the victim to the ground, at which point Halaska stabbed the man in the back, Howe wrote.
The second victim, a friend of the first victim, then walked over to help his friend and Halaska stabbed him twice in the chest.
The stabbings were caught on surveillance footage. Halaska was arrested about two weeks later.
Halaska apologized during her sentencing hearing and stated that one of the victims waved a knife at her and made verbal threats toward her and the other woman, something the prosecutor denied.
She and her attorney, Deputy Public Defender Pedro Garcia, told Superior Court Judge Dwayne Moring that traumatic incidents from her past affected her perception of the events.
Halaska told the judge, “In my warped state of mind that night, I thought I was defending myself and the woman. I wish I would have just called the police.”
Following her plea to the assault counts, she faced a maximum sentence of up to eight years at Monday afternoon’s sentencing hearing.