Long Beach Shootings Are Called Random

Though five young men of Cambodian descent have been shot in Long Beach since October -- three over eight days in December -- police this week said the shootings appeared to be random and do not indicate a pattern of violence aimed at Cambodians.

“We don’t want people to think that if you’re Cambodian and walking down the street, you are somehow a target,” said Long Beach Police Cmdr. Bill Blair, who oversees gang and violent crime investigations. “That is not what is going on here. These shootings are completely and totally independent of each other.”

In a move to reassure the world’s largest Cambodian population outside Cambodia -- one that has complained that officers were not prioritizing the murders of its youth -- Blair and homicide Sgt. Paul Arcala detailed the considerable efforts detectives have made to find the shooters.

Four of the five shooting victims died; the survivor is a member of an Asian gang who has refused to cooperate despite his friend being shot to death in a car beside him.

“We can only work with what information we have,” Blair said.

The Oct. 19 ambush slayings of U.S. Marine Sok Khak Ung and Long Beach City College student Vouthy Tho drew national media attention -- and revived local concerns among some refugees about the poor, crime-riddled core of the state’s fifth-largest city.

The ambush slayings were tragically ironic: The Marine had survived combat injuries in Iraq six months earlier for which he earned the Purple Heart, and both victims were sons of refugees who had fled genocide in their land for safety in America.

But despite all the media attention, the case drew little new evidence or leads. Ung and Tho were among a small group of relatives and friends at a backyard barbecue about 1 a.m. when a man in a hooded jacket sprang from behind a shoulder-high fence in the sideyard and opened fire. Ung’s teenage sister and brother and a nephew were not wounded, but nobody could see the shooter behind the blast of gunfire.

Fliers in Khmer, English and Spanish were repeatedly delivered to Asian businesses and residences near the cottage on 7th Street, behind the home of Ung’s father, where Tho and Ung were killed. Detectives also distributed fliers to city and county jails throughout the region in hopes that someone in custody with information about the shooter might offer it in return for shorter jail time.

On Nov. 15, detectives sought the public’s help on “America’s Most Wanted,” a television program that has led to numerous arrests, hoping that the large national audience would yield new leads about a case for which no witnesses have come forward. They heard from 14 people from across the country -- most of them offering theories but no evidence.

“We even heard from a fortune-telling type who said he saw this [shooting] in his head,” Arcala said.

There may have been few witnesses to a crime that occurred after 1 a.m. in a secluded yard. Police said they have no indication that the fatally wounded pair had gang ties -- Tho was Woodrow Wilson High School’s 2001 prom king and dreamed of a career in underwater welding or in rap.

Ung was viewed by fellow Marines as a brave immigrant who only after returning from battle had become a citizen of the country he fought for.

But at the moment that they were gunned down, they were free-flow rapping, a form popular among gang members and others who taunt each other with put-downs about neighborhood or friends. Blair said this might have been misunderstood if overheard by a passing stranger -- especially a gang member.

“People have been shot for far less,” he said.

Two months later, on Dec. 19, Daniel Chantha, 18, went to smoke in the backyard of a relative’s home in the 1000 block of Atlantic Avenue when he heard a knock at the gate leading to an alley. He opened the gate, police said, and was met by a gunman who fired numerous times at close range, mortally wounding Chantha.

Blair and Arcala said Chantha was a member of an Asian gang who had narcotics convictions but no adult record of violent crime. He was unemployed and lived in a garage.

Last Saturday , two members of an Asian gang were sitting in a car parked in a residential neighborhood near Loma Avenue and 17th Street when a gunman approached up close and fired at the pair. The victims had no apparent reason to be in the neighborhood. Neither lived nearby and they were eating fast food from a restaurant a good distance away, Blair said.

Killed was Kimsot Sok, 23, an unemployed Long Beach resident with an extensive criminal record in Orange and Los Angeles counties, including arrests in Long Beach, Blair said.

Sok was a parolee who had spent time in state prison and had “an extensive criminal history for violent crimes and narcotics crimes,” Blair said, “and he was a known gang member.”

The 23-year-old with him was wounded but survived, and is a member of the same Asian gang, Blair said. For his protection, he has not been identified, and detectives are still trying to confirm that he is who he purports to be. If so, he has a criminal record for drug offenses.

The victims in the last two shooting incidents were gang members, but it is not yet known if their deaths were gang-related, although the victims were shot from close enough range that the shooting “seems personal,” Blair said.

Arcala and Blair stressed that shootings are investigated with equal care regardless of the victims’ personal background -- be they innocents or heroes or felons.

Since Oct. 19, the city has had 32 gang-related shootings, including those in which nobody was hurt, Blair said. He said 43% of the victims were African Americans, 34% were Latinos and 12% were Asians of various nationalities, including Cambodian.