Man Stabbed to Death on Gardena Street
A man walking with a woman in Gardena was stabbed to death Wednesday night by the woman’s live-in boyfriend, Gardena police said Thursday.
Robert Rikio Hashimoto, 25, of Gardena was stabbed once in the left side of his chest about 11:30 p.m. and was pronounced dead on arrival at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, said Sgt. Garry Garrett.
Garrett said Rechie Takeo Kitaoka, 36, of Torrance, was arrested in connection with the killing and was being held without bail Thursday in Gardena’s city jail.
Garrett said officers had been sent to investigate a report of a stabbing in the 1900 block of West 154th Street and were given a description of the suspect’s car. Garrett said an officer spotted the car a block away and saw Kitaoka and the woman kneeling over Hashimoto’s body in the roadway.
Investigators later learned that Hashimoto had been visiting with two women at an apartment on 154th Street and left with one of them--the suspect’s girlfriend, Garrett said.
He said that the two were confronted on the street by Kitaoka and that an argument escalated into the stabbing. Hashimoto ran for about a block before collapsing on St. Andrew’s Place.
Garrett said a knife was found in Kitaoka’s car.
Detectives were trying to determine what led to the altercation.
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