Driver Takes Off-Ramp Into Death Trap : Chef Slain in East L.A. Area Where Asians Are Frequent Targets

Teruhisa Tokunaga’s car broke down on his way home from his job as chef in a Little Tokyo restaurant last weekend and he decided to take the Mission Road ramp off the San Bernardino Freeway to get help.

His bad luck got him killed.

The 37-year-old Monterey Park resident did not know it, but Asians have for several months been the targets of crime at the freeway ramps on the 300 block of Mission Road east of the Civic Center, Los Angeles police officials said Tuesday.

According to the Police Department, the area has been the site of at least 42 robberies against Asians in automobiles since early 1984.

Gang Affiliations

Police late Monday announced that three teen-agers had been arrested in Tokunaga’s killing. Two are 15 and the third is 16. Two of the suspects have gang affiliations, investigators said. Their names were not released because they are juveniles.

The three live in the Aliso Village housing project, which borders Mission Road near the freeway ramps, Hollenbeck Division Homicide Detective Robert Suter said.

The attack on Tokunaga early Sunday morning, however, had been a departure from the usual crime pattern, Suter said. Normally, the “smash-and-grab” style robbery, in which the robbers smash a car window to get the victim’s money, does not lead to murder, he explained. Usually, the detective added, robbers pick Asian women, because that is quicker: “They grab the purse from the front seat.”

Many commuters use Mission Road, Suter said, taking the on-ramp in the 300 block to reach the Santa Ana or San Bernardino freeways.

Asians are the preferred targets, Suter said, because among non-Asian street hoodlums, it is believed that Asians have trouble distinguishing individuals of other ethnic groups.

Tokunaga, a native of Hiroshima, had been head chef at the Aoi Restaurant in Little Tokyo for six years. He was married and had no children.

Rock Thrown

When he drove his car off the freeway at Mission Road, three youths approached him, Suter said. “One threw a large rock on the passenger side, smashing the window.”

Another shot him, the detective said.

Linda Morimoto, chairman of the security committee for the Little Tokyo Business Assn., said Tuesday that she did not know this “target area” for Asians had existed for nearly a year and a half.

Morimoto said she wished that police officials had let the community group know.

“If it is a target area, we like to publicize these things,” Morimoto said. “We would put out flyers in every store in the community and in all the parking areas.”