Woman Avoids Prison Term for Her Role in Bank Robbery

Fighting back tears, a former Ventura County soccer star apologized Monday for robbing a bank with her wrestling champ boyfriend--and was sentenced to eight to 14 months of federally monitored house arrest for the crime.

Tabetha Garibay Hoult told U.S. District Judge Robert M. Takasugi that her decision to drive the getaway car for gunman Todd Hoult after he stuck up the Coast Federal Bank “was out of character.”

And Tabetha Hoult’s attorney, Cornell Price, argued successfully that she did not deserve a prison sentence because of family pressures at the time of the robbery. Price said her mother had just deserted her father to have an affair with Tabetha’s best friend--a 21-year-old man--leaving the young woman to quit school and work full-time to help raise five younger siblings.

“I just wanted to apologize to everybody,” said Hoult, 23, a former soccer player for Newbury Park High and Pepperdine University, who married co-defendant Todd Hoult in July in a courthouse wedding. “I wish I weren’t involved in any of this. I just want to try and move on with my life and get back into school from here.”

Tabetha Hoult--who has taken the last name of a husband now serving an armed-robbery sentence--will be allowed to live at home and drive to her job as a telemarketing supervisor during the time of her sentence.

But she must remain linked to federal authorities by an electronic bracelet designed to monitor her comings and goings.

Her husband, who once won the Division I wrestling championship in the California Interscholastic Federation for Agoura High School, is serving 57 months in federal prison for the bank robbery and is due to serve an additional 56 months in state prison for a string of 1992 house burglaries in Thousand Oaks.

Earlier, the prosecutor asked Takasugi to send Tabetha Hoult to prison.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Andre Birotte Jr. said Hoult waited in her gold Corvette outside Coast Federal Bank in Westlake Village on Dec. 14 while Todd Hoult held up the bank at gunpoint.

When Todd Hoult ran out with the money and hopped into the car, she drove away, “slouched down in her seat as if not wanting to be seen,” Birotte said.

“She played a significant role in the robbery,” Birotte said. “She’s then interviewed by the authorities a day later . . . and she tells a version of events which clearly was thought up to minimize her role in the offense.”

A month later, Birotte said, Tabetha Hoult was arrested by police in Lake Havasu, Ariz., on a charge of disorderly conduct after getting into a fight at a campground there.

But Price argued that Hoult had a rough childhood, complicated by an alcoholic, drug-using father who was physically and verbally abusive toward her mother.

What’s more, Price said, Todd Hoult’s own criminal past--including a state court conviction on burglary charges--may have influenced her.

“I’m not saying Mr. Hoult was a Svengali and a bad influence,” Price said. “[But] a stronger person might very well have said, ‘Look, I can’t have anything to do with this, get out of here.’ And she did not.”