Olympic medals stolen from U.S. volleyball player

Associated PressNov 11, 2022, 7:56 AM EST

Orange County Sheriff’s Department

Authorities on Thursday were looking for three Olympic medals belonging to a member of the U.S. women’s volleyball team after they were stolen from a Southern California home.

The medals were being temporarily stored at a Laguna Hills home and were inside a safe that was taken in an Oct. 29 burglary, Orange County Sheriff’s Department said.

No arrests have been made.

The gold medal was from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the silver from the 2012 London Olympics and the bronze from the 2016 Rio Games in Brazil.

Authorities didn’t immediately identify the owner of the medals.

It’s the second time this year that a medal belonging to a member of the women’s volleyball team has been stolen in Orange County.

Jordyn Poulter reported her 2020 gold medal stolen May 25 after her car was broken into at a parking garage in Anaheim, police said.

Detectives later arrested a suspect in the theft, but weren’t immediately able to locate the missing medal. It was finally returned in June after the owners of an Anaheim barbershop reported finding the medal inside a plastic bag discarded outside their business and turned it over to police.

A 31-year-old Anaheim resident described by police as having a lengthy criminal history has been charged in the theft.

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U.S. women’s volleyball team takes fourth at world championship

By OlympicTalkOct 15, 2022, 12:44 PM EDT

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The U.S. women’s volleyball team finished fourth at the world championship, one year after winning the program’s first Olympic title in Tokyo.

The Americans were swept by Italy 25-20, 25-15, 27-25 in Saturday’s bronze-medal match. The U.S. lost its previous contest to Serbia in the semifinals.

Serbia repeated as world champion, defeating Brazil in the final.

The world championship in volleyball is quadrennial, like the Olympics, making it the single biggest tournament between the Tokyo and Paris Games. The U.S. men lost in the quarterfinals of their quadrennial worlds last month.

The U.S. women’s roster at worlds lacked three-time Olympian stalwarts from Tokyo — Jordan Larson, who said before the Tokyo Games that she would retire from the national team afterward, and Foluke Akinradewo Gundersen, who came back from November 2019 childbirth to make the Olympic team at age 33.

Instead, this team, again coached by Olympic beach and indoor champion Karch Kiraly, was led on the attack by Ali Frantti, a 26-year-old in her global championship debut, with Tokyo Olympians Annie Drews and Jordyn Poulter leading the team in scoring and setting going into the bronze-medal match.

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Kim Glass, retired Olympic volleyball player, injured in attack

Associated PressJul 11, 2022, 4:52 PM EDT

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LOS ANGELES — Kim Glass, a retired Olympic volleyball player, was attacked Friday in downtown Los Angeles when a man threw a metal object at her face in an assault that fractured multiple bones in her face and left one of her eyes swollen shut, the athlete said in videos posted to social media.

Glass, a 2008 Olympic silver medalist, had been leaving a lunch on Friday afternoon when she saw a man run up with something in his hand. He was on the other side of a car, in the street, when he threw the object — what Glass believes might have been a metal pipe or bolt — at her face.

“He just like looked at me with some pretty hateful eyes,” she said in videos posted to Instagram. “It happened so fast, he literally flung it from the street, he was not even close to me at all.”

Bystanders restrained the man — identified by police as Semeon Tesfamariam, 51 — until officers arrived to take him into custody.

Tesfamariam was booked on suspicion of felony assault with a deadly weapon, according to Officer Drake Madison, a Los Angeles police spokesperson. He is being held without bail. It was not immediately clear whether he had an attorney who could speak on his behalf or when he is scheduled to appear in court.

Glass, a Los Angeles native, posted videos showing her injuries to her eye, nose and cheek. She said she believes her vision will be OK and thanked a doctor for stitches near her eyebrow.

“Just be safe out there,” she said in the videos. “You shouldn’t have to be fearful when you walk.”

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