Man Kills Wife, Son and Then Himself

An active member of a local Korean church shot and killed his wife and 8-year-old son before turning the gun on himself, police said Sunday.

The 55-year-old man, whose name was not released, also shot his teenage daughter in the head, police said. She was expected to survive despite having lain wounded in the family’s apartment for hours before parishioners from her family’s church arrived and summoned help.

The murder-suicide at the apartment near Echo Park, which came one week after another man of Korean descent burned his two children to death in the family’s sport utility vehicle in downtown Los Angeles, horrified the state’s Korean American community.

“The Lord have mercy,” said the Rev. Eun Suk Cho, immediate past president of the Federation of San Francisco Peninsula Korean Churches.

Cho, a prominent U.S.-educated theologian, said that the two incidents occurring within a week of each other is a warning for Korean American churches to concentrate less on growing membership and “more on reaching out to those who are hurting.”

Police said they had no motive to explain the shooting. Officials did not release the names of anyone in the family.

The family was known to never miss services at First Church of the Nazarene in Hollywood, so friends became increasingly concerned when the family was absent from a series of church events beginning Saturday morning.

Church friends Hyok Dong Kim and his wife, Mi Sun Kim, tried to contact the family by telephone and by knocking on their apartment door Saturday. They returned Sunday morning and summoned a locksmith to the apartment at 165 N. Hoover St.

When the apartment door swung open, Kim said, his wife began screaming. From the doorway the couple saw the adults sprawled on a bed, he said. The dead woman was 50, police said. Mi Sun Kim began to search the apartment, entered the daughter’s bedroom and found blood on the teenager’s bed and on the floor. She found the 16-year-old girl lying on the floor in her parents’ bedroom, Hyok Dong Kim said.

From the doorway, Hyok Dong Kim saw her arm twitching. “She said, ‘Mommy, it hurts,’ ” Hyok Dong Kim said.

The father was still clutching the gun when coroner’s officials rolled his body over Sunday afternoon.

Mi Sun Kim searched the boy’s room and found the 8-year-old under his bed, police and the witnesses said.

Police estimate the shooting occurred sometime late Saturday or early Sunday morning.

“It was out of nowhere, it was unexpected, no one saw this coming,” said Debra Kim, the witnesses’ daughter, who knows the teenage girl and said that she attends the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies.

A group of church friends assembled at the Rampart Division station Sunday night while some members were being questioned.

The girl was taken to County-USC Medical Center, where she underwent surgery. Police said she was expected to survive. Neighbors in the light-colored apartment complex, which the family managed, appeared shocked. Many said they had not heard anything unusual from the apartment -- neither arguing nor the sound of gunshots.

“How? How? I mean, he’s a good guy,” said Ian Briones, who lives upstairs. “He’s always smiling every time I see him.”

Ok Soon Im, another resident of the apartment complex, also spoke warmly of the family, saying they often shared food with other residents.

Friends from the family’s church also expressed shock. The family had been scheduled to bring a meal Sunday to share with the rest of the congregation.

The deaths follow another apparently inexplicable crime in the area’s Korean American community.

On April 2, Dae Kwon Yun placed his two children in his SUV and set it afire in a deserted alley in downtown Los Angeles near the location of his recently failed business.

His family had once lived in a house in Hancock Park, but had moved to Monterey Park after financial troubles set in. His wife had also recently filed for divorce.

Charles J. Kim, president of the national Korean American Coalition and a longtime leader in Los Angeles’ Koreatown, said many in the community have mental health issues, but no one wants to talk about their problems.

Christian leaders, he said, need to stop building mega-churches and talking about the “prosperity gospel” -- that if people give money to their church, God will reward them -- and instead create a kind of atmosphere that enables suffering people to open themselves up in the church.

Times staff writers K. Connie Kang and Julie Cart contributed to this report.