A chef of popular Los Angeles restaurant Horses accused her husband and business partner of killing the family’s cats in a divorce filing in which she also asked for a domestic violence restraining order.
Elizabeth Johnson filed the request for the order in November 2022 to keep Will Aghajanian away from her out of fear that he might hurt her or someone else. She alleged he physically assaulted her on numerous occasions and killed the family’s cats.
Aghajanian strongly denied her claims in his own court filings, calling them “false allegations.”
Johnson said that “Will and I have had cats that mysteriously ended up dying, including one in 2017 who I took to a shelter when she became seriously wounded overnight. The shelter told me she had been seriously abused, but Will denied it,” Johnson wrote.
“I believed him. Then, last month, we were given another kitten.”
She claims that Aghajanian joked about feeding the kitten to coyotes and said he didn’t like the cat, according to the filing. Eventually, she alleges she witnessed him hurting their cat, she wrote in the filing.
“I caught Will violently shaking the cat late at night, and he died the next day,” she wrote. “Will put the dead cat in the trash and insisted on keeping the corpse in the house.”
Johnson claimed that Aghajanian’s mental and psychological abuse kept her from realizing sooner what he was doing to the animals.
Aghajanian did not respond to a request for comment. The restaurant also did not respond to requests.
The Hollywood restaurant opened in October 2021 to fanfare, garnering national praise for its stylish clientele, its inventive approach to stalwart, modern-American classics. It featured a co-chef kitchen system that purported equal say each night to at least four chefs who were in charge of the menu. On Eater LA, Horses remained on the site’s “heatmap” of “hottest new restaurants” for months. The Los Angeles Times called it “a new modern L.A. institution” and “the city’s most exhilarating new dining experience in the last year.”
A judge in the case approved the domestic violence restraining order in December and reissued it on May 1, according to court documents.
In one of her filings, Johnson also requested that Aghajanian remain 100 yards away from their dogs, Pancho, Javi and Spud.
In his own filing for a restraining order, Aghajanian requested custody back of the dogs Pancho and Javi, saying that Johnson “misled the Court into making orders against me.”
Aghajanian claimed that he was the victim in the marriage. He claimed that Johnson threatened to kill him repeatedly and burned him at least twice with a metal spatula and a spoon she had first placed into a fryer, according to court filings.
Aghajanian also said in the filings that it was Johnson who abused their animals. “She falsely accuses me of things that she has done or that she threatened to do to me and my pets,” he wrote. “My pets are like children to me and I love them dearly.”
“I am fearful of [Johnson] since I am the victim of [her] long-term abuse that has occurred throughout our relationship,” he wrote.
This story originally appeared on LA Times
