Pastor Charged in Slaying; Love Triangle Suspected

A Torrance pastor was charged Friday with the hatchet murder of one of his parishioners in an attack police said was sparked by a possible love triangle involving the minister’s wife.

Samuel Chi, 40, pastor of Evangelical Formosan Church, was being held without bail in Torrance Jail, after admitting to the slaying Wednesday of Torrance dentist Shinn-Der Yu, 40, police said.

Yu, a graduate of National Taiwan University and a dentist in California since 1986, was attacked Wednesday about 8 p.m. in the reception room of his dental office at 3903 Pacific Coast Highway, police said. Chi was seen minutes later in a blood-soaked shirt at a pay phone a block from Yu’s office, summoning police.

“He indicated he had just killed a man,” Torrance Police Lt. Wally Murker said. “. . . There was some suspicion that there was a relationship between the dentist and the suspect’s wife.”

Chi’s wife, Sally, could not be reached for comment. But a woman who answered the phone at the Chi family residence Saturday said that Yu and Sally Chi were not having an affair. “That’s not true between Sally Chi and Dr. Yu,” said the woman, who declined to give her name.

Yu was a member of the church, and both he and Sally Chi were members of the choir, police said.

Yu, a widower and father of a teen-age daughter, died of multiple chopping wounds to the head, said a spokesman for the Los Angeles County coroner’s office. The murder weapon apparently was a hatchet with an 18- to 20-inch handle that was found in Chi’s car, police said.

Yu’s business neighbors in the mini-mall along the busy street described him as kind and considerate; seemingly incapable of becoming involved in a violent dispute.

“He was very nice, very gentle--a real sweetie pie,” said Mary Harkness, owner of a beauty parlor next door to Yu’s office. “When he started building his office, things were a real mess here and he brought us a cake and flowers and said, ‘I apologize for the inconvenience.’ I’m just shocked about this.”

Members of Chi’s congregation also expressed shock and sadness. While elsewhere in the South Bay residents were celebrating the Fourth of July, congregants met to grieve and pray for Yu and Chi.

“They’re just numb,” said Gene D. Vreeland, pastor of South Bay Baptist Church, which shares facilities with Chi’s congregation. “It’s like if you have a close death in the family that is unexpected. There’s a general feeling of numbness (because) it affects two families within the church.”

Vreeland said he was not a close friend of Chi, whom he described Friday as quiet and hard-working. But he said they occasionally prayed together. Chi, a father of two children, has headed his 250-member church since moving to Torrance from New York in 1989. The church holds services in Chinese and English.

At the mini-mall where Yu’s office is located, witnesses said they noticed Chi in the mall’s parking lot the evening of the slaying. Employees of a nearby pizza parlor said Chi appeared at a pay phone outside their shop shortly after 8 p.m., his shirt covered with blood.

“A customer came in and says, ‘You won’t believe this, there’s a guy outside who’s calling 911 to confess to a murder,’ ” said Lander Bowker, manager of the pizza parlor. “I went outside and looked, and there he was, standing there, on the phone saying, ‘I just murdered someone.’ ”

Chi’s arraignment in Torrance Municipal Court, originally scheduled for last Friday, was postponed until this Friday.