Man Fatally Shot During Home Robbery

As his three young daughters slept in a nearby room, a 27-year-old man was shot to death and his wife beaten when men burst into their home early Wednesday morning demanding money, Los Angeles police said.

Two or three men broke into the house in the 19400 block of Hemmingway Street about 4:30 a.m. Wednesday, Los Angeles Police Officer Eduardo Funes said. Inside, they confronted John Gregory and shot the father of three in the chest as his wife, Jennifer, watched.

The men demanded money from Jennifer Gregory and pistol-whipped her, Lt. George Rock said. They then fled in a compact car as neighbors, awakened by the gunshots and Jennifer Gregory’s screams, called police.

John Gregory was pronounced dead at the scene. His wife was taken to Northridge Hospital Medical Center and treated for her injuries, then released to the care of her brother, Mark Guerrero, who said Wednesday night that she was under sedation.

“It’s just a shock,” Guerrero said. “You hear about it all the time, but you don’t think it’s going to hit home like this.”

Neighbors said the previous residents of the Gregorys’ house were robbed at gunpoint last year, when gang members blasted their way in through the front door with a shotgun.

“This is a pretty high-crime neighborhood,” said one 21-year-old resident who would not give her name.

Although police are calling the incident a home-invasion robbery, a spokesman said nothing appeared to have been stolen. Detectives, who were still sorting through the house late Wednesday, said they were investigating a number of leads, including John Gregory’s alleged role in the kidnaping and murder of a woman in Hawaii.

There, officials say, Gregory, who ran a business manufacturing racks for brochures, met Garreth Graham, 32, a carpenter now charged with the kidnaping and murder of Ming Li Chang, 41, the wife of a prominent anesthesiologist.

Honolulu prosecutors allege that Graham, who was working for Chang and her husband, kidnaped her in May, 1994, bound her, stuffed her in the trunk of her Mercedes and tried to extort $45,000 from her husband. Chang suffocated while inside the trunk, said Doug Woo, a spokesman for the Honolulu prosecutor’s office.

Graham’s attorney in Hawaii, Earle Partington, said that in August, Gregory confessed to LAPD investigators that he drove Graham around the island of Oahu for several hours with Chang in the trunk. Partington said he has transcripts of Gregory’s statement to the LAPD in which he says he reluctantly got involved in the crime after Graham kidnaped Chang.

Partington said he had wanted Gregory as a defense witness, saying he backed up Graham’s account that he never intended to harm Chang. But he said he could not see any connection between Wednesday’s killing and his case.

“There’s no way Graham’s involved in the killing in L.A.,” he said. Guerrero said his sister and John Gregory met while they were students at nearby Cleveland High School. They returned to the San Fernando Valley from Hawaii this year.

Jennifer Gregory “didn’t like Hawaii,” Guerrero said. “It was somewhere to go on vacation, not to live.”

Neighbors said John Gregory would frequently play with his three daughters, the oldest of whom is 5, the youngest a few months old.

“He always kept busy with his family,” said Hilda Orozco, 42, recalling the girls helping their father wash the family car last week. “I’m thinking how she’s going to live without him,” Orozco added, referring to Jennifer Gregory, “because they were very happy.”