Woman’s Attacker Is Killed by Ex-Officer

A former police officer serving as a security guard at a Krispy Kreme doughnut shop in the Crenshaw district shot and killed a man who attacked a female worker with an ice pick early Friday, police said.

LAPD Det. Don Richards called Aaron K. Ethols, who left the Los Angeles Police Department in 1999, “a hero because he saved this woman’s life” by shooting Eugene Lamar Addison, 26, of Los Angeles. The incident will be reviewed by the district attorney’s office to formally determine if it was justified. But Richards and another investigator, Sgt. Donni Ellison, both said they believed it was.

The unidentified female worker, 22, was treated and released from Brotman Medical Center in Culver City, where she was taken after the stabbing. Police said her attacker, an employee of another Krispy Kreme store, was a former boyfriend but that the motive was unknown.

Krispy Kreme issued a statement saying it “is cooperating with local authorities to investigate the incident that occurred in front of our store on Crenshaw Boulevard.”

Police said Addison showed up at the shop, where he had once worked, accosted the woman, and repeatedly tried to stab her in the face before he was shot. He then ran off but collapsed a short distance away.