All Kinds of Kids Get in Trouble : Bizarre teen-age murder case implicates high-achieving students

For many students, life at Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton seems to hold all the promise of the school’s name.

It therefore seemed unthinkable that youngsters such as Robert Chan, 18, a senior in the honors program and son of an engineer, and Kirn Young Kim, 16, a computer whiz and son of a physician, would become suspects in a brutal murder case, along with three other teen-agers. Nor did it seem to compute that their alleged victim, schoolmate Stuart Tay, 17, himself the son of a doctor, would have been mixed up in what investigators describe as a conspiracy by him and the other youths to steal computer parts.

But already some of the youngsters have undergone arraignment, as their families sobbed in an Orange County courtroom. The unthinkable has indeed happened in the well-off community near Sunny Hills High School. The question: Why?

Money and prosperity do not immunize youngsters of upper-middle-class families from the lure of crime. The stereotype is that educated, affluent kids don’t get caught up in serious criminal activity. This tale of conspiracy, intrigue and murder--which includes a suggestion that one suspect had ties to a vicious national Chinese gang--was supposed to play out on the other side of the tracks, away from the quiet cul-de-sacs and the sprawling houses that sheltered these kids. In fact, the suspects attempted to steer police in the direction of another stereotype, according to investigators: After they killed Stuart Tay on New Year’s Eve, they drove his automobile to the largely African-American city of Compton, in an effort to create a red herring.

There is a bitter lesson here. Crime and gangs can divert not only the young uneducated poor but also the young educated affluent from a rendezvous with the American Dream. Tragically, the accused teen-agers--some pleading not guilty and others yet to be arraigned--have been knocked from a sunlit path at an early point in their lives.