Ip Again Testifies on Slaying Youth
Roger Sing Ip told a jury Wednesday that he accidently shot a 15-year-old boy to death in 1989 following a traffic dispute when his car lurched forward and the gun went off.
Ip, 35, who formerly co-owned a Pacific Beach Chinese restaurant, is on trial for the second time in the July 10, 1989, slaying of Kurt Von Yokes, a Mission Bay High School student.
A jury acquitted Ip of first-degree murder on July 26 but deadlocked on lesser homicide charges, and Ip is being retried on a charge of second-degree murder.
Ip told a Superior Court jury that he followed a car of teen-agers after they nearly collided with him and yelled racial and obscene remarks to him.
As he testified in his first trial last summer, Ip, of Spring Valley, said he only wanted to talk to the teen-agers about the disrespect they had shown him but that the encounter in a residential area led to a confrontation.
He testified that he fled the scene not knowing that Yokes was fatally wounded or even that anyone had been shot.
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