Was Cab Killing a Suicide Pact?

The shooting death of a man in a taxicab at the Newport Pier involved a dispute among three cab drivers, police said Thursday, and detectives are trying to determine whether the three had a suicide pact.

Investigators said the cabbies drank and drove around Orange County for much of Wednesday before ending up in Newport Beach about 7 p.m. Police said they are not sure exactly what precipitated the shoot

ing, but all three of the men apparently had discussed suicide earlier in the day because of their financial problems.

In Hyang Baek, 55, of Garden Grove was sitting in the cab’s front passenger seat when someone shot him once in the head. The incident was witnessed by dozens of stunned bystanders at the pier.

Two other cabbies, Chae Jung Han, 53, of Garden Grove and David Keum Yung Ji, 52, of Anaheim, were arrested a few minutes later, said Sgt. Mike McDermott of the Newport Beach Police Department.

Liquor and a handgun was found inside the cab.

“They drove to the beach, and at some point one of the two picked up the gun and shot the right front passenger and killed him,” McDermott said.

“We don’t know if this was a suicide pact or whether one was supposed to do another. But apparently suicide was a topic of conversation throughout the day,” he said. “The suspects and victim had all three been despondent recently over their financial situations.”

At the Baek family’s Garden Grove home on a well-tended residential street, relatives and friends stopped by Thursday, many kneeling to say Catholic prayers in Korean before a shrine with flowers, incense, candles and a portrait of Baek.

His son, 25-year-old Joon, said his father had been driving a cab for only two or three weeks. In Hyang Baek had a stroke three years ago, his son said, which left him weak on his left side and began a series of health problems. As a result, he was able to work only sporadically, his son said, sometimes as a security guard.

“That’s why he was moving from job to job,” Joon Baek said.

The situation depleted the financial resources of the family, who had moved to Orange County from Korea in the late 1980s. Still, he said, his father did not seem to be suicidal.

“I don’t know the causes or what happened,” he said of Wednesday night’s killing.

“It’s a mystery to me too. It’s a real big shock, a total surprise. I’m trying to find out for myself what happened.”

His father had leased the cab, he said, and had been bringing it home every night but did not do so Sunday. Joon Baek said he suspected then that his father might have been fired but did not want to upset him by asking.

He said he had met one of the other cab drivers involved in the shooting but did not know him well.

Joon Baek, a financial analyst who lives with his parents, said that his father did not seem troubled or in a particularly bad mood when he saw him Tuesday night.

The son characterized his father as “very quiet, definitely not a person to get into an argument that would end up in something this serious.”

His father enjoyed watching sports, he said, and had been a fencing enthusiast in Korea.

Though the circumstances surrounding the shooting remain unclear, police said they will recommend that prosecutors file murder charges against Han and Ji.

Both were being held late Thursday at the Newport Beach City Jail on $250,000 bail and were scheduled to be arraigned today.