LOS ANGELES (KESQ) – A man who engaged in a gunfight with Los Angeles police outside a Trader Joe’s store in Silver Lake after a pursuit and crash, leading to a store assistant manager being fatally shot by an officer, was sentenced today to more than 200 years to life in state prison.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lisa B. Lench noted “how many lives were changed forever” as a result of Gene Evin Atkins’ behavior, saying she was ordering him to serve his sentences consecutively because they involved separate victims and at times “wholly separate conduct.”
Atkins’ defense attorney, Errol Cook, told the judge that his client “apologizes for his conduct, apologizes for his actions in this case.” But he urged her to impose a lesser sentence in which Atkins would still “be held accountable” for what the attorney called “aberrant behavior.”…