Japanese Youth Killed Seeking Costume Party

A 16-year-old Japanese exchange student who went to the wrong house while looking for a Halloween party was fatally shot by a man inside, police said.

Rodney Peairs, 40, was questioned in the shooting Saturday of Yoshihiro Hattori, but wasn’t charged because “there was no criminal intent,” said Maj. Bud Connor of the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Department.

A grand jury scheduled to convene Nov. 4 will determine whether any charges should be filed, Dist. Atty. Doug Moreau said.

The case remained under investigation.

Japanese Consulate officials were to meet with Louisiana Gov. Edwin W. Edwards and investigators for a briefing today, Moreau said.

Hattori, of Nagoya, Japan, was dressed in a white tuxedo jacket as part of a disco-era John Travolta costume when he went to Peairs’ home.

He was with an American friend wearing street clothes. Neither boy wore a mask.

The house was decorated for Halloween and only a few doors away from the correct house.

A sheriff’s department spokesman said the two teen-agers knocked on the door and startled Peairs’ wife, Bonnie, who screamed, slammed the door, and told her husband to get his gun.

The boys then went to the side of the house and knocked on another door. Peairs went to that door armed with a .44-caliber Magnum revolver and ordered the boys to freeze, Capt. Bob Shortess said. When one of the boys moved, he fired.

Holley Haymaker, mother of the other boy and Hattori’s host mother since August, said her son gave a slightly different account.

She said he told her that when they realized they were at the wrong house, they started to leave, and were on the sidewalk when Peairs opened his carport door armed with a gun and shouted a warning.

“I don’t think if the man said: ‘Freeze!’ Yoshi would understand what that means,” she said.

A man answering the phone at Peairs’ house said the family has been advised not to comment.