Police pursue leads in Little Tokyo hotel manager’s slaying

Japanese tourist Kazuki Okabe arrived in Los Angeles this week hoping to go sightseeing and backpacking in Southern California.

Instead, he said he stumbled onto the bleeding body of a Little Tokyo hotel manager Tuesday morning in what was to become the first slaying in downtown Los Angeles in 2010. The 27-year-old tourist said the woman had been slashed from her chin to the side of her neck with a sharp instrument, but she was still conscious enough to whisper a request for him to call 911. She later died at a hospital.

“I was shocked,” Okabe said Wednesday. “I thought Little Tokyo was safe.”

Los Angeles police Wednesday released the victim’s name as Hideko Oyama, 74, manager of the Chetwood Hotel. Detectives still have no motive for the woman’s death but said they have developed other leads to focus the case. They confirmed no gun was involved but would not provide further information on the nature of the injuries.

“The detectives have made tremendous progress in the last 24 hours,” said Lt. Paul Vernon, commanding officer of the Central Area Detective Division. “The most important thing for the community to know at this point is we believe the murder was an isolated incident linked to the hotel. At this point we see no evidence that the community at large is in danger.”

That the city’s first slaying would involve an elderly Japanese woman in the relatively safe Little Tokyo neighborhood stunned many community members. Brian Kito, president of the Little Tokyo Public Safety Assn., said the last killing he could recall in the area took place in the 1970s, when someone scaled the walls of the Little Tokyo Towers apartment complex to rape and strangle an elderly resident.

Although the neighborhood was plagued with panhandlers in the 1980s, Kito’s group organized foot patrols to drive them out. More recently, the community installed security cameras on several streets in the area. Violent crime is now rare, he said.

“It’s hard to believe a murder could have occurred here because this is probably one of the safest areas in the city,” Kito said.

The century-old brick hotel, on 4th Street alongside hookah and import shops on the edge of Little Tokyo and downtown’s warehouse district, has for decades served as a low-cost refuge for Japanese restaurant workers, seniors, students and travelers. The single rooms rent for about $400 a month. Residents share bathrooms, a small TV, library room and a kitchen.

On Wednesday, hotel residents huddled in the dimly lighted hallway to exchange the little information they knew about Oyama. Yukio Nakamura, a 28-year-old college graduate in accounting who arrived at the hotel a month ago to seek work in Los Angeles, described Oyama as a kind-hearted manager who would offer the residents free rice and occasional gifts of chocolate, dried noodles and vegetables.

Nakamura said Oyama told him that she had married a Taiwanese man against her family’s wishes and moved with him to the United States, where they had a daughter.

But Tsutomu Ishizawa, 58, an unemployed chef, said she also had a hard business edge and would not give residents leeway on late rents.

Takao Suzuki, whose Little Tokyo Service Center helped Chetwood Hotel residents fight for better housing conditions in 2005, said Oyama mostly kept to herself and rebuffed invitations to get more involved in the neighborhood’s community councils and associations. He and others said she used to work at another area hotel before it was demolished and at a Japanese pickled vegetable store in the Little Tokyo Galleria complex.

Community members said Oyama was known to carry a lot of cash, particularly at the beginning of the month when rents were due. They speculated that robbery could have been a motive. But until more is known, Little Tokyo community members are hunkering down and hoping that police are correct in calling the slaying an isolated incident.

“We’re in limbo waiting to see the conclusions police come up with,” Kito said. “I don’t want to put the fear of God in people that there’s a crazy running around here until we know more.”

Anyone with information is asked to call Dets. Thayer Lake or John Thacker at (213) 972-1254. Callers can also phone the 24-hour number at (877) LAPD-24-7. Tipsters can text “crimes” with a cellphone. All messages should begin with “LAPD.” Tipsters will remain anonymous.

teresa.watanabe@latimes.com

andrew.blankstein@latimes.com