Police Believe Intruder With Sharp Weapon Killed Family : Crime: Autopsies are performed as authorities continue searching the Granada Hills home. A murder-suicide is ruled out in the four deaths.

Four members of a Granada Hills 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 attributed the deaths to “multiple sharp-force wounds,” but a spokesman would not explain the phrase.

However, a Los Angeles police detective said “some kind of a sharp instrument” was used to kill Hee Wan Yoo, 36, his wife, Gyung Jin Yoo, 34, and their children, Pauline, 7, and Kenneth, 5.

But Lt. Daniel J. Lang, who is heading the investigation, said, “I’m not going to call it a stab yet.”

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

Relatives found the family dead inside the Wish Street house Wednesday morning after employees of their Koreatown dental lab became alarmed when the conscientious Yoo failed to show up for work.

The couple were lying 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 acknowledged that there appeared to be no sign of a forced entry.

Lang, the lieutenant in charge, said, “We have no idea what the motive is at this point, and we’re doing everything we can to find out.

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

Word of the killings 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 killings.

Yoo’s 77-year-old mother, Sook Kyung Hwang, recalled in 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.”

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

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