Who is Semeon Tesfamariam? Felon who attacked Olympian Kim Glass once punched a former LA deputy DA
Warning: This article contains graphic footage which can be triggering to some readers
LOS ANGELES: The troubled felon accused of nearly blinding Olympian Kim Glass in Los Angeles on July 9, had previously attacked a prosecutor, who is blaming woke officials for allowing the "completely predictable and preventable" violence. In August 2020, Irene Lee was a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles when Semeon Tesfamariam attacked her while she was on a coffee break.
“He just came up behind me and he socked me. I felt like a car or bike had hit me and I started stumbling forward and just crying,” she told KCAL9. Lee remembers the attack vividly. Lee walked over to a Starbucks with a coworker in downtown LA when she was randomly attacked. "I'm screaming out crying," she said. "Cindy is calling for help and a security guard pepper sprayed my attacker."
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Who is Semeon Tesfamariam?
Tasfamariam, 52, had assaulted at least three other women before attacking Lee and Glass, according to court records. In 2018, he used a golf club and a hammer to pursue two women. According to court records, he pleaded guilty in January 2020 to striking a 19-year-old with a metal pole. Tasfamarean was sentenced to probation. “Where he’d gone after a young woman with a metal pipe and struck her numerous times,” Lee told Fox News.
At sentencing in her case, Lee asked the judge as told to the portal, “How many more women does this defendant have to hurt for it to matter?" “As a victim, when I spoke at the sentencing, I felt like I wasn’t being heard,” Lee told KCAL9 of the judge, who was not identified in the reports. “The judge was fully aware of his history — even more privy to it than I am,” she stressed. Lee urged the system to improve and pay attention to patterns after her attacker assaulted yet another person six months after being released.
"Him or other people like that are going to hurt more people," Glass told KCAL 9. "He's been let out enough now," Glass demanded change after learning that her attacker had a pattern of offenses. "Something has to change because what we're doing now is not ok," she said. "This man has been let out multiple times. He has done this to other people."
"By the grace of god Kim is alive and healing but I just can't imagine if he bashed her head in and she died," she told CBS news. "It would be just another murder in downtown L.A. I feel like this is entirely preventable." According to LA County DA George Gascón, the apparently homeless attacker was on probation at the time of the attack and had previous felony assault arrests in 2018 and 2019.
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“This was a brutal, unprovoked attack,” Gascón said in a statement. “Mr Tesfamariam has a troubling history of attacking apparently random people with dangerous weapons". “His behavior appears to have escalated with time,” he went on. “We have asked the court to preventatively detain him to protect the public. The court granted that request and he is currently being held without bail.”
Tesfamariam was supposed to be arraigned Tuesday, July 19, but Gascón said a doubt "was declared" about his competency to stand trial. A hearing has been scheduled for August 17.