Phantom Blooper
10-26-03, 05:17 AM
ONG BEACH, Calif., Oct. 24 — Yoeun Ung lighted three sticks of incense with a disposable lighter, closed his bloodshot eyes and moved his lips in soundless prayer on Friday morning. He placed the smoking sticks into a Styrofoam cup before a picture of his son, Lance Cpl. Sok Khak Ung of the Marines, who was shot to death along with a friend in the driveway of his father's home last weekend.
Words do not come easily to Mr. Ung, who speaks little English. He is a struggling handyman who fled Cambodia in 1979, hoping to find a haven in this country from the Khmer Rouge. Instead, early Sunday morning, he met the too-familiar American nightmare of sudden, causeless violence and death.
Corporal Ung, too, escaped a war, having served for five months with the Marines in Iraq this year, suffering a shrapnel wound and winning the Purple Heart. His four-year hitch was due to end Oct. 31. He was planning to take the SAT on Monday and attend college in San Francisco.
Mr. Ung said he had simple dreams for his son. "I wanted to see him grow up, stay in school and get a good education and a good job," he said, his words interpreted by another son, Vibol Ung. "That's what we came here for."
But even in his voiceless grief, the elder Mr. Ung will not turn on his adopted land. "Why should I be mad at America?" he asked. "America has helped us a lot since we've been here. We're just" — Vibol searched for the right English word — "dumbfounded."
The shooting occurred after midnight last Saturday, as Corporal Ung and several friends and relatives were outside his father's house, freestyle rapping, drinking and eating barbecue. The home is a sparsely furnished shotgun-style shack at the end of a driveway off a busy street in a rundown section of Long Beach known as Little Phnom Penh. The authorities say Asian, Latino and African-American gangs contend for territory and influence in the area.
The police said there was no evidence that Corporal Ung, 22, or the other victim, Vouthy Tho, 21, were involved in gang activities. There are no suspects, although witnesses said a figure in a dark hooded sweatshirt rose up from behind a five-foot fence separating the Ung property from the apartment next door and fired a half-dozen shots from a handgun before running away. Corporal Ung was hit twice in the head and once in the torso and died shortly after reaching the hospital. Mr. Tho was hit in the head and died on Monday.
Mr. Tho's father, Anthony Tho, a truck driver and also a Cambodian refugee, said he learned of his son's shooting early Sunday when he was in Nashville. "When I was waiting for the plane," Mr. Tho said, "I saw people walking, laughing, they were happy and I thought, `What about me?' By the time I came home, the doctors said his brain was dead."
"When I first came to America," he recalled, "I thought I was in paradise. I thought I'd have a better life and my son would have a good future. I can't believe I raised my son for 21 years and now he's gone."
Vibol Ung said that because of the late hour and because the group at the Ung house was rapping, area gangsters might have assumed they were members of a rival gang.
May Chung, an assistant Los Angeles County district attorney who specializes in Asian gang cases, said that she had no theory on this killing but that there was often no easily understood motive for such crimes.
"They don't comport with our rules of society," Ms. Chung said. "They live according to their rules, and it doesn't make sense to us."
She said this case echoed the 1996 murder of Haing S. Ngor, a Cambodian-born medical doctor and actor who won an Oscar for best supporting actor for the 1984 film "The Killing Fields," which told the story of the Khmer Rouge regime.
Dr. Ngor was gunned down in a robbery outside his home in the Chinatown section of Los Angeles. Three members of the Oriental Lazy Boyz gang were convicted in the case.
Like the elder Mr. Ung, Dr. Ngor escaped genocide in Cambodia only to confront a more random sort of violence in Southern California.
Mr. Ung fled Cambodia in 1979 after 15 years in the military. "I just kept running, running," he said. His journey took him through a refugee camp on the Bataan peninsula in the Philippines, where Corporal Ung was born in 1981. Mr. Ung landed in the United States two years later.
(Continued)
Words do not come easily to Mr. Ung, who speaks little English. He is a struggling handyman who fled Cambodia in 1979, hoping to find a haven in this country from the Khmer Rouge. Instead, early Sunday morning, he met the too-familiar American nightmare of sudden, causeless violence and death.
Corporal Ung, too, escaped a war, having served for five months with the Marines in Iraq this year, suffering a shrapnel wound and winning the Purple Heart. His four-year hitch was due to end Oct. 31. He was planning to take the SAT on Monday and attend college in San Francisco.
Mr. Ung said he had simple dreams for his son. "I wanted to see him grow up, stay in school and get a good education and a good job," he said, his words interpreted by another son, Vibol Ung. "That's what we came here for."
But even in his voiceless grief, the elder Mr. Ung will not turn on his adopted land. "Why should I be mad at America?" he asked. "America has helped us a lot since we've been here. We're just" — Vibol searched for the right English word — "dumbfounded."
The shooting occurred after midnight last Saturday, as Corporal Ung and several friends and relatives were outside his father's house, freestyle rapping, drinking and eating barbecue. The home is a sparsely furnished shotgun-style shack at the end of a driveway off a busy street in a rundown section of Long Beach known as Little Phnom Penh. The authorities say Asian, Latino and African-American gangs contend for territory and influence in the area.
The police said there was no evidence that Corporal Ung, 22, or the other victim, Vouthy Tho, 21, were involved in gang activities. There are no suspects, although witnesses said a figure in a dark hooded sweatshirt rose up from behind a five-foot fence separating the Ung property from the apartment next door and fired a half-dozen shots from a handgun before running away. Corporal Ung was hit twice in the head and once in the torso and died shortly after reaching the hospital. Mr. Tho was hit in the head and died on Monday.
Mr. Tho's father, Anthony Tho, a truck driver and also a Cambodian refugee, said he learned of his son's shooting early Sunday when he was in Nashville. "When I was waiting for the plane," Mr. Tho said, "I saw people walking, laughing, they were happy and I thought, `What about me?' By the time I came home, the doctors said his brain was dead."
"When I first came to America," he recalled, "I thought I was in paradise. I thought I'd have a better life and my son would have a good future. I can't believe I raised my son for 21 years and now he's gone."
Vibol Ung said that because of the late hour and because the group at the Ung house was rapping, area gangsters might have assumed they were members of a rival gang.
May Chung, an assistant Los Angeles County district attorney who specializes in Asian gang cases, said that she had no theory on this killing but that there was often no easily understood motive for such crimes.
"They don't comport with our rules of society," Ms. Chung said. "They live according to their rules, and it doesn't make sense to us."
She said this case echoed the 1996 murder of Haing S. Ngor, a Cambodian-born medical doctor and actor who won an Oscar for best supporting actor for the 1984 film "The Killing Fields," which told the story of the Khmer Rouge regime.
Dr. Ngor was gunned down in a robbery outside his home in the Chinatown section of Los Angeles. Three members of the Oriental Lazy Boyz gang were convicted in the case.
Like the elder Mr. Ung, Dr. Ngor escaped genocide in Cambodia only to confront a more random sort of violence in Southern California.
Mr. Ung fled Cambodia in 1979 after 15 years in the military. "I just kept running, running," he said. His journey took him through a refugee camp on the Bataan peninsula in the Philippines, where Corporal Ung was born in 1981. Mr. Ung landed in the United States two years later.
(Continued)