Monrovia Mourns a Death in the Family : Crime: Popular owner of Bicycle Sam’s was slain by 12-year-old who wanted a bike, police say.

It was such a grown-up crime, police say, with such a childlike motive.

A 12-year-old boy with a .22-caliber revolver entered Jung (Sam) Woo’s Monrovia bike shop on Thursday just after school let out, the time of day when youngsters usually flocked there to replace a spoke or patch a tire.

According to authorities, the armed youngster was not interested in pillaging the cash drawer. When he fired a single shot into the head of the store’s popular owner, police say, the boy wanted a new bicycle.

On Saturday, as the youngster was being held on murder and robbery charges, Woo’s friends and customers could only shake their heads. The killing, said one Monrovia police officer, has created “a community trauma.”

“How does a 12-year-old boy get a gun? This is not L.A.!” exclaimed Susan Pilcher, one of several Monrovia residents who stopped by Bicycle Sam’s darkened store on West Duarte Road to drop off flowers and pay her respects. “This doesn’t happen here. Not to somebody like this.”

Nestled against the San Gabriel Mountains, Monrovia usually counts its annual murder tally on one hand--and usually, adults are to blame.

Woo, whose shop was in a mini-mall in the quiet town of 35,000 just 20 miles from Los Angeles, was shot as he stood behind the counter of his crowded store. The 48-year-old man died Friday at Methodist Hospital of Southern California in Arcadia. The cash drawer at his store was not opened. After the shooting, police say, the boy--whose name was withheld--left without taking the bicycle he had allegedly killed for.

The boy, a Monrovia resident with no previous criminal record, was identified by some children who saw him with the gun, Detective John Abbott said. The weapon was found at another location, and the boy--who Abbott said “possibly might have been bragging” about the shooting--was arrested.

Two other juveniles, 12 and 13 years old, were arrested and released to their parents pending further investigation. Abbott said that although police do not believe that the boys were in the store when Woo was shot, they may have helped plan the robbery.

Abbott said the nature of Woo’s wound indicated that he did not know he was about to be attacked. Abbott said he does not think Woo even saw the gun.

“It wasn’t a wound that would indicate that he would know he was being shot,” Abbott said, declining to elaborate. “The boy more than likely shot Sam when he was unaware. The shooting itself . . . seems to be totally unprovoked.”

That detail fit with the shop owner’s personality, according to those who knew Woo, who immigrated from Korea years ago. He worked hard, running the store by himself six days a week. Friendly and trusting, he was an example of Monrovia at its best--the kind of man children turned to in a pinch. If their families were strapped, he would extend them credit. If youngsters were short on money, he would fix their bikes for free.

“I don’t know why they had to kill him,” said Rhona Chavis, who watched as her two daughters, 6-year-old Jessica and 8-year-old Jennifer, laid some yellow mums alongside the carnations and baby’s breath decorating Bicycle Sam’s door. “If they wanted a bike, he’d just have given it to them.”

At a meeting Saturday morning at First Lutheran Monrovia Church, Woo’s death was on everybody’s mind. That is where Pilcher heard about it, she said. “Look what’s happening to our kids,” she remembers someone saying. The killing of Woo, she said, was being greeted as a wake-up call.

“These kids are troubled,” she said. “This is happening for a reason. And we need to do something about it.”

For at least 20 years, Monrovia’s children had grown up with Woo, graduating from training wheels to kickstands, from banana seats to mountain bikes. During the summer especially, when school was out, parents knew they could often find their children at Bicycle Sam’s.

“They’d just say: ‘We’re going to Sam’s,’ ” recalled Steve Summerell, a pastor at Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Arcadia and a regular customer of Woo’s.

Joseph Garcia, 14, bought three bicycles from Woo. Just last Sunday he had come in to pick up some patches, he said, recalling that Woo told him to get a lining too, “so you won’t get holes.”

“He was nice to us,” Joseph said sadly as he peered in the brightly painted store window. “You’d just bring your bike in. He’d tell you what the problem was.”

“He was a good friend to us,” said 8-year-old Jennifer Chavis, who dropped off a card addressed “To Sam’s Family.”

The shop’s door handle was adorned with such memorials. “We’ll miss you Bicycle Sam,” said one card. Another, attached to a red carnation, read: “We will always remember you and everything you did for me.” It was signed in a child’s hand: “Sincerely, Travis.”

“We think we’re safe out here in the ‘burbs,” said Wendy Caldwell, who works in an optical laboratory two blocks away. Stopping by the store on her way back from a ski vacation in Mammoth, Caldwell shook her head sadly. “I’m sickened. . . . This is too close to home.”

At Woo’s wood-paneled tract home in Diamond Bar, his sister-in-law answered the door, handed reporters a small snapshot and said Woo’s wife and family were in shock. Neighbors said Woo’s only child, John, was about the same age as Woo’s alleged attacker.

“It’s so sad,” said Tom Posin, Woo’s neighbor. “That’s a man who wouldn’t hurt a fly. He was super, super gentle.”