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Customer Finds Anaheim Liquor Merchant Dead

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SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

An Anaheim liquor store owner who worked 16-hour days the last seven years was found dead at the business by a customer Friday morning, authorities said..

The body of Haeng “Hank” Shin Kim, 57, of Westminster was found around 9:30 a.m. only inches from the doorway of his Lucky 7 Market, 3268 W. Lincoln Ave., authorities said. “When we got here, there was blood all over the place,” Anaheim Police Sgt. Rick Martinez said.

Only hours after Kim was killed, his wife, Esther, drove up in a van, looking toward the store where she and her husband worked seven days a week. She stared at the police officers gathered in the parking lot behind the yellow police tape.

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Anaheim Police Sgt. Bob Conklin walked over to the woman, opened the car door and began talking to her. She then collapsed over the steering wheel, sobbing and clutching Conklin’s hand. Conklin and Detective Chuck Sullivan helped the distraught woman from her van and gently walked her to a waiting police car that rushed her away.

Martinez said late Friday he still had not heard from the coroner’s office about the cause of death. There were some reports that Kim had been shot, he said, .

But Ed Felker, owner of Sir Edward’s Stylists and Barbers on the same street, who usually arrives at work around the same time as Kim, said he didn’t hear any gunshots Friday morning.

Karen May, a regular customer at the Lucky 7 Market for the last five years, said Kim was robbed once before, about two years ago, but he was not injured that time.

She described Kim, who has two grown children with his wife, as a man who loved to practice his golf putting technique while at work and was just beginning to warm up to his customers.

May placed a poinsettia and two votive candles on the sidewalk near the store as an impromptu memorial.

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“We just wanted to show the family our care and concern and that we love them and that they have all the support of us behind them,” May said. “Hank did not deserve this to happen to him.”

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