SAN ANTONIO – A woman accused of stabbing two people at a Northwest Side Walmart last week may have been pushed over the edge by the holiday season, according to her ex-boyfriend.
Angel Lace Rios, 24, was arrested moments after the attack Friday at 5:30 a.m., which San Antonio police said was unprovoked.
Roger Lighteard, who is also the biological father of one of Rios' two children, said she has had a rough year, including family problems.
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Lighteard believes, with Christmas approaching, Rios may have been feeling especially low.
"I'm thinking, her seeing the snow, you know? Knowing it snowed for, like, two or three hours, it probably really hit her that she wasn't with us, her family, so she probably just snapped," he said.
Lighteard said he and Rios had been a couple for nearly five years.
Prior to the end of their relationship earlier this year, Lighteard knew Rios to be a kind, loving person who also was a good mother.
He did not want to elaborate on the nature of the problems that he said she had been enduring.
The stabbing, though, was completely out of character for Rios, Lighteard said.
"I was shocked," he said. "I don't know, but I know she's not like that. I know she wouldn't do that to anyone."
According to police, Rios suddenly lashed out at a Walmart employee who was walking past her in the store, cutting the 48-year-old woman with a knife on her chin.
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When George Ortiz, an off-duty Floresville police officer who was working security at the time, came to her rescue, Rios stabbed him under his chin, police said.
Ortiz suffered the most serious injury and was rushed to a hospital.
As of Monday morning, he was in good condition, a police report said.
The Walmart employee suffered a non-life-threatening wound.
Rios is being held in the Bexar County Jail on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and aggravated assault on a public servant.