A Los Angeles firefighter accused of assaulting a woman who was feeding stray cats in his neighborhood testified Monday that she slapped and kicked his mother “hard enough to knock her back and over a six- inch curb” before he pulled the alleged victim out of her Jeep and hit her.
Ian Justin Eulian, 38, is charged with one felony count each of battery with serious bodily injury and assault by means likely to produce great bodily injury. His 71-year-old mother, Lonieta Fontaine, is charged with one count of accessory after the fact.
Eulian, who lives with his mother, said their West Adams neighborhood is “not good and it’s getting worse.” He said he and his mother had long been frustrated by about a dozen stray and feral cats that were a constant source of noise and feces around their home.
Some of the animals destroyed screens to access the crawlspace under Eulian’s residence, where several of them died, forcing the firefighter to retrieve their bodies. At least one cat attacked his mother’s blind dog, Max, Eulian testified.
Rebecca Stafford was in the habit of coming into the neighborhood to feed the cats. A week or two before the Sept. 14, 2013, encounter, Eulian said he approached Stafford while the 47-year-old woman was fighting with another neighbor and asked her if she knew about the troubles the cats were causing.
Stafford promised to feed the strays at the end of the alley, Eulian said, though he told her that at some point she would need to stop altogether.
When the firefighter returned home after midnight on Sept. 14, 2013, Stafford was back and two got into an expletive-filled shouting match in the 2500 block of West View Street.
“She just lost it, she went absolutely crazy,” Eulian told jurors.
He said she threw cat kibble at him and then kicked him. Eulian said he stood his ground, but didn’t retaliate at first. Eulian’s mother walked up, allegedly to try and calm things down, nut the two women ended up slapping one another. Then Stafford allegedly kicked Fontaine in the chest.
Eulian admitted trying to punch Stafford, who was inside her Jeep, but said he missed.
“If I had landed a punch like that, I wouldn’t have had to do anything else,” Eulian testified.
When it looked like Stafford was going to level another kick, the defendant said he pulled her out of the vehicle “to stop her from abusing my mother.”
He hit Stafford and she hit the ground, Eulian said.
Stafford previously testified that she remembers Eulian, who is trained as an EMT, “reaching into my car and grabbing me. And I said, ‘Are you going to hit me?’ and then it was like lights out. I don’t remember anything until I woke up.”
After walking away to calm down, Eulian said he returned to checked on the woman’s condition.
“She was dazed, I mean, I just struck this woman, so she was dazed,” he said.
Ultimately he and his mother helped Stafford into her car and drove her home.
Prosecutors say the two told Stafford that she tripped and hit her face on her car.
During the prosecution’s case, jurors were shown a video recording of the confrontation from a camera at a nearby building.
While cross-examining Eulian’s mother before the firefighter took the stand, Deputy District Attorney Joshua Ritter challenged Fontaine’s version of events, which seemed to match her son’s.
He asked why Fontaine told a detective that her elbow had been injured, never mentioning any blow to her chest.
Ritter also contrasted Fontaine’s comments during an interview by a detective investigating Stafford’s complaint with the video evidence, asking her three times whether she had lied and was lying today.
Fontaine admitted that her memory of all that happened didn’t always match up with what she was able to see replayed on the video, but denied that she had lied.
If convicted on all counts, Eulian is facing up to seven years in state prison, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
— City News Service