Intruder Killed Family of Four, Investigators Say

Four members of a San Fernando Valley family found slain in their home were apparently killed by an intruder using a sharp weapon, investigators said Thursday.

The Los Angeles County coroner’s office spokesman attributed the deaths to “multiple sharp-force wounds,” but would not explain the phrase.

A Los Angeles police detective would say only that “some kind of a sharp instrument” had been used to kill Hee Wan Yoo, 36, his wife Gyung Jin Yoo, 34, and their children, Pauline, 7, and Kenneth, 5.

Few other details were released Thursday as autopsies were performed and investigators continued searching the Yoos’ Granada Hills home for evidence. Lang said police have ruled out the possibility of a murder-suicide and believe the Yoos were killed by an intruder.

“We have no idea what the motive is at this point and we’re doing everything we can to find out,” said Lt. Daniel J. Lang, who is heading the investigation.

“We’re using all the resources we can in the department, including the Asian gang unit,” he said, declining to elaborate.

Relatives found the family dead inside the Wish Avenue house Wednesday morning after employees of their Koreatown dental lab became alarmed when Hee Wan Yoo failed to show up for work. The couple were covered by a bloodstained blanket in the living room and the children were found in a bedroom, relatives and friends said.

Detective Tom Lange declined to discuss what investigators found in the house but said there appeared to be no sign of forced entry.

Word of the murders spread quickly through Koreatown, where two daily newspapers carried the deaths on their front pages Thursday. The Korea Times, in Seoul, also ran a front-page story on the murders.

Sook Kyung Hwang, Hee Wan Yoo’s 77-year-old mother, recalled during a visit to the house Thursday that her son felt so secure in his home that he had recently dug up a thick hedge sheltering his yard from the rest of the street and replaced it with flowers “so he could see the neighborhood better and the kids could play easier.”

The sight of the garden intensified Hwang’s anguish as she, her oldest son, and other family members waited outside the empty house.

“How?” Hwang repeated over and over in Korean as she sat cross-legged on the grass. “And why could they have done this to such a decent kid?”