Eden Adugna, a 22-year-old woman of Ethiopian origin, died on August 31, 2025, in Cincinnati's Mount Washington neighborhood after a shooting inside an apartment on Beacon Avenue. She was with her 20-year-old sister, Feven Adugna, and their friend, 27-year-old Bemnet Deresse. Two of them were pronounced dead at the scene; the third, initially taken to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center in critical condition, succumbed to injuries soon after.
The Cincinnati Police Department later identified all three victims, confirming Eden Adugna's age and that she was female, and noting the quiet residential setting that was ruptured by gunfire on a late-summer Sunday.
Investigators quickly focused on a single suspect: 26-year-old Samuel Tyler Ericksen. Police said Ericksen knew at least one of the victims; subsequent reporting described that he had a romantic interest in one of the young women. Records also showed that on August 8—just over three weeks before the killings—Eden had reached out to authorities, a 911 call that would gain new gravity after the tragedy. The picture that emerged was not of a random rampage but of a deliberate act carried out by someone within the victims' social orbit, amplifying the shock among friends and colleagues who knew the sisters from their work at Good Samaritan Hospital and who remembered Bemnet for his easy laugh and steady kindness.
There would be no arrest. Ericksen turned the gun on himself after the shooting and was taken to the hospital in critical condition. Police reported that he died of a self-inflicted wound that same day, with authorities formally announcing his death on September 2, 2025. The case shifted from a hunt for a killer to the painstaking work of reconstructing the final weeks and hours that led to the loss of three young lives, a process marked by official updates and the quiet bureaucracy of death notifications.
Cincinnati gathered to mourn them. Vigils were held near the Beacon Avenue complex, where candles and prayers mixed with stories about the sisters' devotion to patients and Bemnet's drive as a student and graduate. Community leaders and hospital colleagues called the losses devastating, a word that echoed through statements and memorials as the Ethiopian community and the city at large tried to contain their grief. In those public moments the facts were stark and simple: Eden Adugna, age 22 and female, was gone; her sister Feven, age 20 and female, was gone; and their friend Bemnet, age 27 and male, was gone. The only suspect had died, leaving behind questions that could no longer be asked of him.
