Maximum Sentence Urged in Grocery Store Slaying
Black activists and members of the family of a black teen-ager killed in a South-Central market demanded Friday that a Korean-born grocer convicted in the shooting receive the maximum sentence for her voluntary manslaughter conviction.
“A young black child was murdered in cold blood,” said Chilton Alphonse, executive director of the Community Youth Sports and Art Foundation. “The maximum sentence, as I understand it, is 16 years,” he said. “She should be given the full measure of that.”
Du’s slaying of Latasha Harlins has been blamed for intensifying racial tensions between Korean storekeepers and their black customers in South-Central Los Angeles. The victim’s aunt, Denise Harlins, and Abdul Wazir Muhammad, a regional representative of the Nation of Islam, complained at Friday’s news conference that justice was not served in the trial of Du, who will be sentenced next month.
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