9-Year-Old Girl Shot During Robbery
A 9-year-old girl was shot and critically wounded during a robbery Saturday when a man with a handgun burst into the back room of a South-Central Los Angeles service station and mini-mart where the girl was watching television with her father.
“There was nothing the little girl did” to get shot, said Detective Nolan Gilmore of the Los Angeles Police Department.
The girl’s mother had just entered the back room when the gunman suddenly entered and, according to Gilmore, said: “Give me the money or I’ll kill you.” He took more than $500.
The girl was listed Saturday in stable but critical condition at a local hospital. Her parents, Hong and Soon Kang, who were uninjured, are of Korean ancestry and the suspect was black. But Gilmore said there was no indication of racial motivation in the incident, which occurred 10 blocks from a market where a Korean-American grocer killed a black teen-ager in March, inflaming tensions between African-Americans and the Korean community.
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