Grocer Pleads Not Guilty in Slaying

A Highland Park grocer Monday pleaded not guilty to charges that he shot and killed a 17-year-old girl last week after her friends allegedly tried to steal a can of beer.

An attorney briefly involved in the case said Korea Jo Won Kim told him that he was shooting at the ground, not directly at the car where Brenda Hughes was sitting in the back seat.

Kim, 51, was accused of firing his handgun into the car carrying five teenagers Thursday, killing Hughes and wounding another student in the leg. The incident occurred after a confrontation in the store with three of the teenagers. Hughes, a former Franklin High School cheerleader and softball player, had never left the car.

Kim, wearing a plaid shirt and a denim jacket and speaking through a Korean interpreter, pleaded not guilty to one count of murder and four counts of attempted murder. He was arraigned before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Kellogg, who ordered Kim to remain in custody in lieu of $3.2 million bail.

His wife, Wha Sung Kim, who last week blamed her husband’s behavior on the pressures of running a store plagued by crime and dealing with her mental illness, dabbed at her eyes throughout the proceedings.

Police said a store surveillance camera showed Kim squaring off with one of the boys, who then handed the grocer a can of beer. After that, the boy held his jacket open for Kim to inspect, apparently to demonstrate that he had taken nothing else, police said.

Kim allegedly followed the three boys out of the store and fired three shots into the car, killing Hughes.

Police arrested Kim at the scene; Hughes was pronounced dead at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena.

Wha Sung Kim suggested Friday that her husband “just snapped” under the strain of a seemingly endless series of thefts that cut into their meager profits. Kim had sunk his savings into the Avenue 56 store, his wife said, so that he could spend more time with her. She said she suffers from severe depression.

A funeral service for Hughes is scheduled for Friday at St. Ignatius Church in Highland Park. A prayer service for the Franklin High senior will be held Wednesday evening at Forest Lawn Cemetery’s Church of the Recessional in Glendale.

In court Monday, Willie Benavides, 21, who said he was a friend and neighbor of the Kims, said he had collected signatures from local residents in support of Kim.

“Our signatures signify his character as being rational and his judgment clean and thought out,” the petition read. “We acknowledge him as a generous, passionate person.”

Benavides said he was watching over the store during the weekend because he had heard rumors that it might be burned down.

“It was a clear mistake,” Benavides said. “He thought his life was in danger, so he shot.”

One of Kim’s lawyers, Tyson Park, said Kim told him that he does not remember how many times he pulled the trigger.

Park defended grocer Soon Ja Du, who was convicted in 1991 of fatally shooting 15-year-old Latasha Harlins in a South Los Angeles market after a scuffle over a bottle of orange juice. The grocer was sentenced to probation in a decision that inflamed racial antagonisms. The grocer was a Korean immigrant; the teenager was black.

Park described the Kims as “simple people” who pay $140 a month to rent their apartment. “I feel sorry for the family,” Park said. “This is not a racial issue. It’s a mistake.”

Under California law, a “reasonable person” who sincerely believes that another person is putting his or her life in danger can justifiably kill the offender. Homicide is justifiable only if the person believes that his or another’s life is on the line; it is not enough to fear property damage.

In its complaint against Kim, the district attorney’s office alleged that Hughes was killed “willfully, unlawfully and with malice aforethought.”