Financial, Cultural Tensions Preceded Sacramento Tragedy

Four bulbs of garlic dangle above the front door of the Xiong family’s apartment. They were hung there, in keeping with Hmong tradition, to protect the home’s inhabitants from harm.

But there was nothing to guard them against the dangers within.

On Sunday, the Xiongs’ relatives and neighbors--gathered in the building’s grim, trash-strewn courtyard--told a painful tale of a family torn by cultural ways radically different from those of their homeland, and of a husband who felt overworked and resentful of his wife.

Those long-simmering tensions, friends say, ultimately led Kao Xiong to do what many called unfathomable--shoot and kill five of his young children and himself.

“He was a good man, he worked hard for his family,” said Kua Cha, a cousin of Xiong’s who lived four doors down. “But between him and his wife there was a problem. The rules of this country, they are so different. It was very hard for him.”

Xiong was found dead Saturday evening inside the family’s grimy one-bedroom unit 10 minutes from the Capitol. The bodies of the children--ages 1, 2, 3, 5 and 7--were nearby, three on a bed they shared in the living room, another in front of a television that was still on when police arrived.

Xiong’s wife, Mai Thao, and two other boys ages 9 and 14, were not harmed. One child managed to escape through a bathroom window as the shooting started; the other was outside with his mother.

Police said both Xiong and his wife were in their 30s. They said she was held overnight Saturday in a mental health hospital for fear she might commit

suicide. She returned to the family apartment Sunday but was too overcome to talk. Only a few of the relatives who milled around spoke English.

Police also declined to give a version of events until they finish their investigation, perhaps today.

Born in the mountains of Laos, the Xiongs married in Thailand and moved to the United States about eight years ago, living first in Stockton, then Merced, then Denver. They settled in Sacramento last year, choosing the capital city because its Hmong community is sizable, about 20,000 strong.

Relatives said Xiong also hoped that the economic picture would be brighter here, but that was not the case. Like so many transplanted Hmong--facing language barriers and lacking many marketable skills--Xiong struggled to find a well-paying job. For a time he worked at a slaughterhouse; most recently, he trimmed the grass at a golf course.

The financial strain caused frequent marital discord, according to neighbors and two of the husband’s relatives. And on Friday, they said the couple’s fighting peaked after Xiong announced that he wanted to buy a jacket and his wife, who apparently controlled the household finances, refused.

Kua Cha said the episode angered Xiong and typified his gradual loss of authority since the family’s immigration to the United States.

The loss of authority, he added, was further underscored by the fact that Xiong not only toiled long hours as the breadwinner, but also found himself taking on many of the housekeeping chores, including the cooking.

In Laos, “things would not happen this way,” Kua Cha said. “Here, the rules are different. It’s hard for many men. Even myself.”

Indeed, Hmong culture in the highlands of Laos was a predominantly patriarchal one, in which men dominated decision-making within the family and the clan. While the men farmed or performed other manual labor, the women were expected to keep house, do all the cooking and produce children. Their birthrate-- around 10 children per woman--is among the highest in the world.

The Xiong family’s economic woes were plain to see, with all nine members crammed into a one-bedroom apartment in one of Sacramento’s most dilapidated neighborhoods.

One of the unit’s front windows is missing, the other has a blue tarp for a curtain. A rickety fence hides a patio cluttered with a spare tire, two mops, a bag of rice and a soiled white teddy bear.

“He had a hard time finding a job that could provide for his family,” Chong Cha, another cousin who lives in Lodi, said as he stood numbly outside apartment No. 10 Sunday. “He worried about that a lot. But when we saw him at Thanksgiving, everything seemed wonderful.”

Xiong’s worries increased this month, friends say, when the rent rose from $310 to $330 a month. Neighbors said that the couple’s loud arguments grew more frequent and that Xiong started speaking fatalistically.

“He told me, ‘My only future is to die,’ ” Kua Cha said. But no one understood precisely what that meant.

Struggling to find words to describe his cousin’s feelings, Kua Cha said Xiong felt trapped, unhappy in his marriage but afraid to leave for fear of losing custody of his children.

After Friday’s argument, Xiong became very quiet. On Saturday, Kua Cha said, “he asked me for a cigarette and said it was the last time he would ask me for one. He would not say why.”

That afternoon, Xiong telephoned an uncle in Lodi and said he planned to kill his children. The relative, 30 minutes away, raced to the apartment. The police were already there.

Kua Cha, who has spoken to one of the surviving boys, said Xiong had cooked dinner for the children and told them to “eat well, because after we eat I am taking you to see your mother-in-law in the sky.”

The eldest heard a dark meaning in the words and fled through the window. The others were shot with the two guns that Xiong sometimes used to hunt squirrels--a shotgun and a high-powered rifle.

Sociologists see the Hmong as one of the most disadvantaged immigrant groups ever to land in America. Until the CIA recruited them in the 1960s to fight the Viet Cong, the Hmong were mountain farmers who lived in huts and had no written language or concept of Western ways.

After languishing in refugee camps in Thailand, sometimes for years, thousands of Hmong moved to the United States, where they number more that 125,000. With little schooling or modern job skills when they fled Laos in the mid-1970s, they have endured one of the most agonizing adjustments of any refugee group, with many landing on welfare.

Aside from the economic woes, the Hmong have suffered numerous cultural clashes over everything from their ways of disciplining children to teenage marriages and Western medicine.

“There are so many tensions,” said William Vang, a Sacramento teacher and official with the Hmong American Civil Rights Assn. “Comparing the Hmong society in the mountains of Laos and here, we probably have shifted 180 degrees in all parts of life.”

Shortly after noon Sunday, Xiong’s wife returned to the building on Fairfield Street, wailing loudly. Hmong neighbors, many of them weeping, quickly encircled her. The men, hands in pockets, stared at the ground.

Aided by her friends, Mai Thao struggled into her apartment. But she was soon ushered out by the landlord, who nailed two boards across the door. She then collapsed on a stairway nearby, still wailing, while several neighbors sang a mournful song.

Relatives identified the dead children as Kong Meng Xiong, 7; Lisa Xiong, 5; Kong Pheng Xiong, 3; Peter Xiong, 2; and Micky Xiong, 1. The surviving children are staying with their grandparents.