Renée Details Aaron Smith-Levin’s Violence and His Attempt to Attack Her

TRANSCRIPT:

I worked in one of our Churches in Los Angeles as the Executive Director, and I frequently ran into Aaron Smith-Levin.

I was on the phone talking, speaking with someone, and I heard this yelling about 20 feet away from me. The yelling got out of hand and so I said, “Just a minute,” to the person I was on the phone with.

So I ran like about 15 to 20 feet and I could see around the corner, and there was Aaron Smith-Levin and he was rolling on the floor, punching his senior. And his senior was more or less trying to protect himself. So one of my staff was there and I said, “Pull them apart.” And they did and Aaron was basically out of control. It took two people to hold him and pull him apart.

He could be really nice sometimes, and then he would do what he did with me.

I was having a meeting one day and I had 20 people there and I was doing a briefing as the Executive Director of the organization—which I did quite often in that same office and I never had a disturbance. And then, all of a sudden, in the middle of the meeting while I was speaking, Aaron Smith-Levin walks in and he just kept coming forward, even though we were in the middle of a meeting. And so I said, “Excuse me, can I help you?” And he goes, “This is my office.” And I go, “We’re in a meeting.” And he continued coming forward until I was looking up at him. He was that close to me. And I was incredulous.

I knew that he was going to attack me because he was too close and he was yelling. And he felt like I shouldn’t be there with my staff and that we should all leave and he should be there, which was pretty much insane. So I thought that I was really confronting a person who was crazy. So, two people, three people jumped up and had him on each side and just backed him away out the door.

It has definitely never occurred with me before that someone would walk in the middle of a meeting, right? So I was definitely afraid of him.