3 Armed Robbers Tie Up Family; Woman Killed

A shaken housewife on Tuesday described how three armed robbers burst into her Lincoln Heights home and shot her 29-year-old friend to death as the family watched in horror.

“I don’t know why they shot her,” Mei Mong, 41, said. “She didn’t say anything to them. They just shot her.”

The 29-year-old victim, Ling My Ly, a clerk at a Lincoln Heights grocery store who aspired to a career as a singer, was taken by ambulance to Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, where she died late Monday.

“It was a very cold-blooded murder,” said Los Angeles Police Lt. Sergio Robleto, commander of the Hollenbeck Division detectives who investigated the crime. “She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

The detectives said the robbers and their victims were apparently all of the same Chinese-Vietnamese descent. Robleto said members of Vietnamese gangs are increasingly targeting members of their own ethnic group for violent armed robberies.

Watching Television

Mong said that she and several of her children were watching television about 8:30 p.m. Monday when the three men, all wearing ski masks and brandishing guns, burst into her modest home on Avenue 22, demanding money.

Mong said she gave them $700 that she had been saving to pay her rent. The men then pushed her and her children to the floor and tied them up with tape.

She said the men kept repeating, “Where is more money?” and she kept telling them, “I don’t have any more money.”

It was then, family members said, that Ly--who had been in another part of the house--walked into the room where the bound victims lay.

“The man just shot her,” Mong said. “She fell to the floor, never saying a word. Her eyes were open, and her hand moved a little bit, but she never said anything.”