Frank Grillo, a Marvel actor, has criticized Los Angeles’ escalating crime rate after his personal boxing trainer was murdered.
Azuma Bennett, a 30-year-old fitness trainer, was shot up to eight times on Friday at 9:45 a.m. outside a legal marijuana business on West Slauson Avenue in Windsor Hills, California.
Following Bennett’s death, Grillo, who portrays the villain Crossbones in the Avengers and Captain America films, stated, “He has no idea what has happened to Los Angeles.”
Grillo told NBC Los Angeles, “He made everyone feel great about training.” “I don’t know what happened to Los Angeles for such a handsome man to be murdered and killed for no reason.”
Police discovered Bennett, a native of Sydney, Australia, lying in the entranceway of a marijuana business with gunshot wounds and pronounced him dead at the spot.
ABC7 says that the number of killings in Los Angeles is at a 15-year high.
There were 181 killings in the city during the first half of the year, a 34 percent rise over the average number of homicides during the same time period between 2015 and 2019.
Bennett operated at Fortune Boxing Gym in Los Angeles and counted Grillo and UFC fighter Jason Miller among his clientele.
Tamara Fortune, the owner of the gym, has created a GoFundMe page so that Bennett’s family can afford to go to Los Angeles for his funeral service before his body is flown back to Australia. To now, $35,000 has been collected. “Azuma was a unique individual. An outstanding athlete, combatant, instructor, and friend/partner to so many,’ said Fortune.
She continued, “We lost one of the greatest available.” He was not deserving of this. He was kind to everyone he met and constantly engaged everyone in the gym with his good energy and charisma.
“Take it easy, Azuma, and keep striking upwards.” We adore you buddy.’ Police have not disclosed any suspect information, but they have verified that they are actively investigating the death of Mr. Bennett as a homicide.
Anyone with information on the incident should contact the Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau or Crime Stoppers.
In recent months, Los Angeles has experienced an upsurge in crime rates, including homicide.
Critics have placed the blame on progressive District Attorney George Gascon, who, they claim, has advocated criminal justice changes that have contributed to the rise of lawlessness.
The growing violence has been attributed to lenient bail conditions and support for the defund the police movement when global protests over policing erupted in 2020 in response to the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
On Monday, Gascon was not recalled after organizers determined that 200,000 signatures were invalid.
To initiate an election, recall organizers needed to collect around 570,000 valid petition signatures. Monday, the county registrar’s office revealed that just 520,000 of the 710,000 submitted signatures were legitimate.
In Los Angeles, around 5,705 robberies have been reported between January 1, 2022 and August 6, 2022. In the same time frame a year ago, 4,753 robberies were reported.
Moreover, homicide and gunshot victim figures are essentially identical to those of the previous year, nearly achieving parity. Since August 6 of this year, there have been 18,852 incidences of violent crime, which represents a 5.7% increase compared to the same period last year, when there were 17,752 violent crime incidents. Multiple daytime crimes have horrified the community, including Brianna Kupfer’s murder in broad daylight on January 13 by a mentally ill man who randomly attacked her while she worked in an expensive furniture store.
In June, a now-deceased shooter murdered two police officers in Southern California in a hotel gunfight.
At the time he committed the murders, 35-year-old Justin William Flores was on probation for a prior weapons offense. The unlawful handgun punishment was handed down to Flores in 2021 as part of a lenient plea bargain made feasible by prosecutor George Gascon’s weak prosecution policies.
Flores committed suicide during the altercation with the police, which occurred after officers responded to a stabbing report at the Scenic Motel in El Monte, a tiny Los Angeles County suburb.
Last year, Flores, who was already on parole, pled guilty to being a felon in possession of a handgun, a felony offense that, according to law enforcement authorities, should have resulted in a minimum of three years in jail.
Gascon, who was brought into office in late 2020 as part of a wave of enlightened prosecutors who swore to seek alternatives to punishment, ensured that he received the bare minimum sentence of two years probation and 20 days in jail.
Consequently, the matter has caused uproar, with many blaming Gascon.