ROWLAND HEIGHTS : 2 Get Probation, Fines for Sale of Animal Parts
Two former owners of a Rowland Heights store were sentenced Tuesday to two years’ probation each and ordered to pay a total of $40,500 in fines for the illegal sale of animal parts.
Ki Won Kim and Kyung Sup Shim, owners of K&S; Trading Co., entered no contest pleas on Oct. 26 to 12 criminal charges, four of them felonies.
The two were arrested Feb. 21, 1992, when state Department of Fish and Game agents raided the Colima Road store and seized most of the store’s stock, including packages of sliced elk, deer antlers, animal horns, canned and pickled rattlesnakes, frozen goat meat and bear gallbladders, skins and paws.
Defense attorneys had argued that the owners, who previously operated a similar store in Texas, did not know the sale of the animal parts is illegal in California. But Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Brodney said investigators found documents indicating that Kim and Shim knew about the state’s ban against selling endangered species.
The animal parts are believed in some cultures to have medicinal value.
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