$3-Million Claim Filed in Police Shooting Death

The family of a Korean man killed by police on Valentine’s Day visited the site of the shooting for the first time, appearing with their lawyers Thursday to announce that they have filed a wrongful death claim asking for $3 million.

The parents of Hong Il Kim, dressed in black, sobbed as they stood in a shopping center parking lot, by the driver’s side of the red Toyota 4-Runner that the 27-year-old was driving that day.

“What decent society would stand by and allow a young man to die like that, to take three shots in the face?” said Kim’s 60-year-old mother, Sun Im Kim.

She and her family joined their attorneys in announcing an administrative claim accusing four officers from the Orange and Westminster police departments and the California Highway Patrol of negligence and using excessive force in shooting Kim at least eight times, said Angela Oh, the family’s attorney. A pathologist hired by the family concluded that Kim was shot three times at or near the left eye and five times in the upper body, Oh said.

Kim, after apparently making a reckless right turn in Westminster on Feb. 14, led police on a 30-mile chase through several cities and was finally boxed into a parking space in the shopping center at Chapman Avenue and Newport Boulevard in Orange.

Surrounded by officers, Kim lurched his vehicle toward two officers standing in front of it and was killed in a shooting that police said couldn’t have been avoided. Kim was trying to run over the officers and they opened fire in self-defense, police said at the time.

“We are aware of the claim,” Orange Police Lt. Ed Tunstall said Thursday in response to the news conference. “But it’s inappropriate for us to comment any further.”

Police officials said any public comments might jeopardize investigations being conducted by the district attorney’s office and the departments involved.

“Second, they’ve made it clear that they’re going to sue us, and we can’t comment when civil litigation is pending,” Tunstall said.

The family’s attorneys are asking for $3 million in damages, because “entities usually respond more with the more money that they lose through lawsuits,” said James Muller, another lawyer retained by the family.

“We are also asking that they look at the policies involved,” Muller said. “We feel that the lack of a specific policy contributed to the incident that led up to Kim’s death.”

Asked whether the issue of race will enter the wrongful death argument, both lawyers emphatically said no.

The officers “should not have shot Kim,” Oh said. “However, I don’t think race was a factor in the officers’ decision to shoot.”

The attorneys and representatives from several Korean American advocacy groups also used the news conference to call on Asian Americans and other Southern Californians to demand that police officials reexamine their pursuit policies. Less than two months after Kim was shot, a pursuit in Riverside County ended outside Los Angeles in the videotaped beating of two undocumented immigrants.

Lawyers also responded to a published report that cocaine was found in Kim’s blood. Although they acknowledged that the toxicology results might have explained Kim’s behavior, the findings don’t excuse the police actions, they said.