Police Say Family’s Slaying Was Not Racially Motivated : Granada Hills: Officers provide few answers to worried neighbors after killing of four Korean-Americans.

The slaying of four members of a Korean-American family in Granada Hills last week apparently was not racially motivated, Los Angeles police investigators told a meeting of the family’s uneasy neighbors Tuesday night.

The motive for the killing is unknown, but “there is nothing to indicate that it is a hate crime,” said Lt. Daniel Lang, head of the investigation. “Normally, if it was a hate crime, the perpetrators let you know it,” he added, saying that hate criminals usually leave messages, such as painted swastikas or racist slogans.

There also were no indications that robbery was the motive, he said, although robbery has not been ruled out.

Lang’s comments came at a meeting of about 100 neighbors of the Yoo family, who were found stabbed to death Nov. 20. The meeting at El Oro Way School was designed to ease the fears of residents, Lang said.

Since the bodies of Hee Wan Yoo, 36, his wife Gyung, 34, and their children, Pauline, 6, and Kenneth, 4, were discovered in their home, investigators have been unusually quiet about the case. The killings were discovered by relatives who were called when Hee Wan Yoo failed to arrive for work at the Koreatown dental lab he bought three years ago.

Members of the audience quizzed Lang on possible motives for the crime. Several wanted to know if the killer was from Granada Hills or had followed the Yoos home from Koreatown.

“We’re very scared,” said Hal Flom, block captain of a Neighborhood Watch group near the slaying. “There’s a lot of misinformation out there.”

The audience appeared to reflect the upper-middle-class neighborhood near Rinaldi Street and Balboa Boulevard. It included many parents with small children and white-collar employees dressed as if they had come straight from the office.

Lang apologized for not being more candid. “We have many of the same questions you do. We honestly don’t know the motive behind the slaying,” he said. But “what we know, we’re going to keep as close to our vest as possible,” he said, because police do not want to hinder the investigation by making public some details.

Officer Rick Gibby, who coordinates community policing programs in the area, said he decided to organize the meeting last week when he went to the school the day after the slaying and saw a “Korean woman crying her eyes out” when she dropped off her child.

“I wondered how many other people were shut away in their homes doing the same thing,” he said.

Hoping to reach the neighborhood’s growing Korean-American community, which is uneasy over the killings, Gibby brought a Korean-language translator to the meeting. But only about 10 people of Asian appearance attended the meeting and several of them said they were of Chinese or Filipino descent.

Some members of the audience were disappointed that police did not reveal more about the slaying.

“I expected police to tell us more about what happened to the Yoo family,” said Kyo Park, 38, a Korean-American who lives about half a mile from the Yoo home. “We need to know what happened.”

Park, whose son was in the same first-grade class as Pauline Yoo, said she was worried because her car had been stolen recently. But she did not believe Korean-Americans were being targeted for crime.

“It can happen to anyone,” she said, holding a small boy in her arms. “We’re just lucky it wasn’t us.”