2 L.A. Women Killed Helping Border Church

Two female volunteers from a Los Angeles-based Korean Christian church were killed in Tijuana on Saturday when an earthen foundation collapsed on them, Mexican authorities confirmed Monday.

Five other volunteers were injured, police said.

The dead and injured were among 23 people--all from Southland-based congregations--who came to Tijuana to help in the construction of an addition to the Mt. Sinai Church in the outlying neighborhood of Colonia Felipa Velasquez, said Rafael Gonzalez, a spokesman with the state attorney general’s office in Tijuana.

The victims were members of the Hanmi Presbytery, a Korean congregation attached to St. James Presbyterian Church in the Koreatown section of Los Angeles. Several of the injured were members of a Korean Baptist congregation based in Ontario in San Bernardino County.

Church officials could not be reached late Monday on the tragedy.

The victims apparently were buried beneath a huge volume of earth as they were working on the project, said Gonzalez. The women died at the scene.

The accident occured at 2:45 p.m. Saturday, according to Mexican press reports.

The coroner’s office in Tijuana and police officials identified the two as Eui Shin Lim, 18, and Susan Kim, 20.

Authorities said the injured included Rita Kim, 20; Connie Chung, 15; Mike Chung, 15; John Henkell, 39, and Bethany Marshall, 28.

According to Baja California judicial police and eyewitness accounts, the volunteer group and eight members of a local Baptist church had spent Saturday morning digging a ditch to lay the foundation for a brick containment wall. Francisco Perez, one of the Mexican volunteers, said they had planned to build a containment wall 15 feet high because they feared that the church’s earthen support was so weak that it could fall on a Pentecostal church being built about 15 feet from the bottom of the slope.

At 2 p.m., part of the group took a lunch break but seven members continued working, according to eyewitnesses.

Carlos Gamez, whose home is next to the church, said he was in his yard “when I heard this thud and a cry. I turned around and the people who I had just seen standing there a few seconds before were buried.”

Gamez and the church volunteers began digging to save those trapped. About 20 minutes later, Tijuana firefighters and police, as well as Red Cross paramedics and members of local rescue groups, joined in.

To prevent a second cave-in during the rescue, volunteers placed planks against the unsteady soil supporting the church. One portion of the church’s floor was left sticking out 15 feet above where the victims had been covered with what state police spokesman Adan Mendez described as “several tons” of clay.

Mendez said that when the hillside collapsed, one of the brick walls from the Pentecostal church also came down on top of some people.

“We think that (the brick wall) is what killed (the two victims), but we’re not sure right now,” Mendez said.

The Mount Sinai Baptist church, which was established about seven years ago, has been visited by church groups from all over the United States, Perez said. “They have helped us build our church and help us economically,” he said.

The Mount Sinai church, he said, has about 20 members.

Times staff writer George Ramos and the Associated Press contributed to this report.