4 Robbers Gun Down Waitress, Steal $20 From Thai Restaurant

It was all for $20 that Kessara Pattanatanung was gunned down.

Four masked robbers entered the Thai restaurant where Pattanatanung worked and shot her in the chest Friday before fleeing with a few bills from the cash register, Long Beach Police said.

“They fired several times, demanded money and fired again,” Police Detective Dennis Robbins said. “It appears shots were deliberately fired at” the waitress and cook.

Pattanatanung, 29, was dead by the time police arrived at the Thai Chef Restaurant at 1460 Alamitos Ave. at 9:35 p.m.

Another employee, 40-year-old Yupha Thonginphong, was shot in the face. She was treated at St. Mary Medical Center and released.

Two other employees were in the restaurant at the time of the shooting. Neither was injured.

Long Beach police issued only a bare description of the robbers as 16 to 18 years old.

Thai shop owners in the area were shocked that Pattanatanung had been killed in such a senseless crime.

“Just for $20,” said Thaworn Anderson, who owns a Thai restaurant on nearby Anaheim Street, which in the last few years has grown into a bustling center of Vietnamese, Cambodian and Thai shops. “It’s scary.”

Southeast Asian shop owners in the area said they are constantly worried about the crime around them and rarely venture north of Anaheim Street into the neighborhood where the Thai Chef Restaurant is located.

“A lot of people are afraid to go there,” said Lee Wilson, a Vietnamese immigrant who owns a shop on Anaheim Street.