[UPDATED with video] Orange County crime Story of the Day: Saehan Bank incident

In an upscale part of Buena Park (the buena part of Buena Park), near Fullerton which has become a tony Korean-American enclave, a branch of Saehan Bank was held up at gunpoint by a kyopo man, although everyone except one bank employee was allowed to leave.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Police identified the gunman who was critically wounded during a hostage standoff at an Orange County bank as 55-year-old Myung Jae Kim, according to KNBC-TV Channel 4.

Kim appears to have targeted the bank’s manager, Michelle Kwon, taking her as a hostage instead of trying to commit robbery, police said.

Kim reportedly entered Buena Park’s Saehan Bank late Thursday morning, brandishing a weapon pointed to the ground. He ordered all of the employees and six customers out of the bank, but had Kwon stay behind, police said.

A tense standoff began, with police using a robot to deliver a phone so negotiators could talk to Kim.

At about 3 p.m., police shot Kim when he appeared in front of a glass door with a gun pointed at Kwon. He apparently went to the door trying to retrieve an item that he demanded from police, who refused to say what the item was. Kim was critically wounded and taken to the UC Irvine trauma center. Kwon escaped unharmed.

Good to see the robots are good for something other than putting English teachers out of work. Anyway, somewhere else they were saying that this particular gunman knew that particular bank employee and wanted her to compensate for the $240K that was supposedly taken from his safe deposit box at Hanmi Bank in Garden Grove (what we in OC call Koreatown). That is what triggered this violent act.

[UPDATE: The safe deposit box stuff is being reported in Korean-language media, but I haven't seen it in the actual articles in English-language media, only here and there in the comments sections.]

Anyway, things like this (or that nastiness in Atlanta) may be an indictator of what we should expect initially if guns were ever made widely available in Korea.

Note: I was nodding off when I originally wrote all this; I'm pleased that it generally makes sense.

What's that? SWAT's that!

UPDATE 2:
I've added video from Los Angeles ABC affiliation KABC:



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Police states

APEC is coming to town. Tomorrow, Hawaii time, which is today, Korea time, except that it's actually the day after tomorrow, Korea time.

And already things are getting, well, interesting. First off, there was a bomb scare near the site where some of the Asia-Pacific leaders will meet.

On top of that, a group of protesters calling for the return of sovereignty to the Kingdom of Hawaii have occupied the historic Iolani Palace. That stunt reminds me of a bumper sticker I've seen once or twice around Honolulu: "De-Occupy Hawaii," a play on the various "Occupy _____" movements, of which Honolulu also has one.

In fact, the Occupy Honolulu folks have sort of melded with the anti-APEC crowd.

But the real kicker is that one of the federal agents sent to Hawaii as part of APEC's security detail has been arrested for second-degree murder in the shooting death of a local man, 23-year-old Kollin Elderts, at a McDonald's in Waikiki. The federal agent, 27-year-old Christopher Deedy, allegedly followed Mr Elderts to the restaurant in the wee hours of the morning after an altercation at a Waikiki nightclub.

And although it's not Hawaii-related, I feel obliged to bring news of a shooting death involving a Santa Ana police officer (S.A. is the OC seat) who thought two guys were stealing a car in his Lakewood (L.A. County) neighborhood at 6 a.m. and went after them. Although the vehicle allegedly being stolen supposedly belonged to one of them and they were changing a tire, both ran when they were confronted by the off-duty cop in his PJs, who followed them in his own vehicle. He caught up with Jason Bitz, the guy supposedly being paid $12 to help change the tire, who somehow got into the police officer's personal vehicle and tried to drive away and was then shot four times, killing him.

The police officer says the young man was reaching for his waistband, but it turned out he was unarmed. Why, oh why, do these unarmed young men always reach for their waistbands only to end up dead?

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Orange County Crime Story of the Day: Death of a cellmate

You may recall this story from this past September, about the Korean-American actor who played  henchman Random Task (a nod to Oddjob) in the Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery movie getting life in prison for a brutal kidnap and rape that occurred two decades ago.

Well, it appears that Mr Jospeph Hyungmin is a suspect in the murder of his own cellmate:

The dead inmate was a parole violator serving a new two-year sentence from San Luis Obispo County for failing to register as a sex offender. He was found dead in the cell he shared with Son before 6 p.m. Monday.

The death was being treated as a homicide, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokeswoman Terry Thornton said. [HT to White Rice]

I have no idea what sex offense had landed the fifty-year-old cellmate in prison in the first place, but, like rape, execution is not the sentence that was handed out and it is not something we should glibly label as just deserts.

Some might find it ironic, but in my own steadfast opposition to capital punishment, perhaps the only scenario I can think of where execution might be justified is when a lifer such as Mr Son must be stopped from murdering inmates, guards, or visitors to the prison he/she is locked up in.

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UPDATED: Orange County Crime Story of the Day: Henchman, indeed

A kyopo from Orange County who has played bit roles in various movies, including a stint as a henchman in Austin Powers, has gotten life in prison for a kidnap and rape over two decades ago.

From the Los Angeles Times:

To millions of moviegoers he was Doctor Evil's henchman Random Task.

But now a 40-year-old Orange County actor famous from an "Austin Powers" movie will be spending life in state prison in connection with a 1990 Christmas Eve gang rape and torture of a woman taking a walk to see the seasonal lights.

Joseph Hyungmin Son was found guilty Aug. 25 of felony torture, an offense that carries a life term without possibility of parole. The actor was originally charged three years ago with numerous sex crimes but because of a statute of limitations, prosecutors eventually won a conviction on torture.

The crime unfolded seven years before the 1997 movie "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery."

According to prosecutors, a woman walking back to her apartment alone with her dog after going to look at Christmas lights with a relative and friend was stopped by Son about 12:30 a.m. on Christmas Eve 1990. Son asked her for directions and then with another man dragged her to their car, threw her in the back and drove away.

Son and the other man told her they were driving to Compton, pistol-whipped her and repeatedly threatened to kill her. Prosecutors said Son then repeatedly raped, sodomized and forced the victim to orally copulate him in the back of the car. He also tortured her with a firearm. Son's cohort Santiago Lopez Gaitan, 40, of San Antonio raped the woman.

Afterward, Son threatened to kill the victim and counted the bullets in the gun out loud as she pleaded for her life. Son and Gaitan finally allowed the woman, identified only as Jane Doe, to leave, naked and with her pants tied around her eyes. The victim was actually in Huntington Beach and went to a nearby home where homeowners called the police.

While physical evidence was gathered in the case from the sexual assault, the case went cold. Son, however, was convicted in May 2008 of felony vandalism in an unrelated case and was forced to give a DNA sample. That sample was then linked to DNA collected in the 1990 case, prosecutors said.

I guess playing an evil sidekick wasn't much of a stretch for him. Good riddance.

UPDATE (October 2011):
Mr Son may have killed his own cellmate in prison.

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Orange County Crime Story of the Day: Beware of happy emails

When I'm away from Orange County for months at a time (previously in Seoul and lately in Honolulu), my mom would call me up and chat just to make sure I was all right and somewhat closer to getting married and producing grandchildren for her. On rare occasion when I was away for more than six months, I'd make sure to email her while I was in faraway lands like Hong Kong, Italy, or Japan.

Today's OCCSD has made me second guess that tack, for my own safety. Here we have a guy who is being accused of killing his business partner and then obscuring that fact by faking, through a series of emails, a situation where the murder victim was not in contact with his family because he'd gone to Africa for the vacation of a lifetime.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Last summer, Christopher Ryan Smith emailed family and friends with exciting news: He was embarking on an African adventure.

Over the next few months, his emails recounted the highlights. One day he was paragliding near Johannesburg. On another, he was sand boarding in "huge mines" in South Africa where the "sand was softer than snow powder."

In December, the 32-year-old Internet executive from Laguna Beach announced that he was going to Congo and Rwanda. Then, abruptly, all communication stopped.

His worried family in Oregon called U.S. authorities and launched an international hunt, fearing he might have run into trouble in the war-torn region.

But Orange County authorities now say Smith was never in Africa; in fact, he was already dead. They say he was killed inside his office in San Juan Capistrano by his business partner, Edward Younghoon Shin, who used Smith's email account to send the messages.

The thing is, I think I briefly met this Edward guy some years ago, maybe in Irvine. He's not the Edward of the K-blogosphere, though.

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Orange County Crime Story of the Day: reverse Darwin Awards

Anybody who knows me knows I hate two things: drunk drivers and effin' stupid people who do effin' stupid things that adversely affect other people, typically innocent bystanders (I guess that would include drunk drivers, so it's one thing I hate).

Join with me, won't you, in reading this lovely tale from the Los Angeles Times about four fine young gentlemen who had fashioned simple "bombs" by combining dry ice and water inside a plastic bottle, which causes pressure to build in the bottle until it bursts open in a loud explosion:

Shortly after 11 p.m. Thursday, a group of pedestrians at Paseo De Valencia and Stockport Street in Laguna Hills reported that an SUV with four teenagers inside drove by and threw a bottle at them that exploded, Amormino said.

About 20 minutes later, someone in a vehicle of the same description threw one of the devices into the vehicle of a man driving with his window down near Alicia Parkway and the 5 Freeway in neighboring Mission Viejo.


The bottle exploded as the man grabbed it to throw it out and injured his hand, Amormino said. He followed the SUV onto the freeway and managed to write down the license plate number and call it in to authorities, who tracked down the vehicle.

The teens told investigators they had exploded up to six devices around southern Orange County. Only three explosions were reported to authorities.

Authorities are unsure what motivated the attacks but say they could have caused serious injuries or traffic accidents.

“Whether they were intending to harm or not, it's a dangerous thing,” Amormino said. “If it was a prank, it's a dangerous prank and obviously ill-advised.”

In this article and in a similar one in the Orange County Register, people in the comments section have not been kind to them. While pointing out that this "prank" could actually have caused a deadly accident, some are celebrating that the star football player will likely lose his full-ride athletic scholarship to Northern Arizona University. Others have pointed out that, had they been victims of this foursome, would have chased them down and shot them. Nice.

I just don't know what to say. Are these guys sociopaths? Just plain stupid? What would be a reasonable punishment? (They may get little punishment at all, since eighteen-year-old Mitchell Gary Melugin and nineteen-year-old Robert Jacob Browne are only being one misdemeanor count of throwing a substance at a vehicle.)

God, I hope I never have kids like this. When I was young, the worst we did was put firecrackers in tangerines that grew in my backyard, watching them explode after we tossed them in the air. We were limited by the number of tangerines the tree produced, so it never really got out of hand. And at any rate, I stopped this by junior high; these jackasses are legal adults, fresh out of high school.

Orange County Crime Story of the Day:kyopo home invaders

One thing I like about living in Seoul: a general lack of home invasions. But alas, globalization might someday bring them to ROK shores.

Anyway, this story in the Los Angeles Times was about a home invasion in Diamond Bar, a tony Los Angeles County burb just north of the OC, with a tie-in with Las Vegas. Nothing special really, that it's apparently a kyopo gang, caught by the oddest of details:

Detectives had little to go on in the case but learned one of the suspects was a black man who spoke Korean very well, Kim said.

Then last month, investigators learned of a monthlong FBI undercover sting with Las Vegas Metro Police that netted five members of a Korean organized crime group from Los Angeles.

The suspects were allegedly preparing to rob what they believed was a drug stash house in Las Vegas.

When they were interviewed by Asian gang team detectives in Las Vegas, three of the five suspects allegedly implicated themselves in the Diamond Bar home invasion robbery.
They included David Chon, 28, James Han, 28, and Rene Hypolite, 26, who investigators say has African American and Korean parents and speaks fluent Korean.

Investigators also identified three other suspects in the robbery: one who drove the getaway car and two who masterminded the home invasion. The alleged driver, Andrew Kim, 26, of Los Angeles, was arrested Jan. 24 at his home in Los Angeles.

I just hope it's not one of the eleven Andrew Kims I know.

Orange County Crime Story of the Day: Hindus threaten to kill California governor

That's the apparent message from graffiti found in Orange County this week. Readers of Monster Island are no doubt aware that the symbol above is not the Nazi swastika but the Hindu swastika. Perhaps the Hindus are angry that Governor Jerry Brown spent some of his inter-Sacramento years studying Buddhism in Japan instead of Hinduism in India.

Or maybe it's Christians pretending to be Hindus threatening to kill Jerry Brown on February 14 to protest how Christmas has turned into a second Valentine's Day in places like Japan and South Korea.

Or maybe it's Hispanics in Santa Ana (incorrectly) using the swastika as a White power symbol to make it look like the Tea Party folks are threatening the governor.

Or maybe it's actual Tea Party members trying to make it look like it's illegal Hispanics trying to make it look like the Tea Party folks are threatening the governor.

Or maybe ...

Orange County crime story of the day: American al-Qaeda reportedly arrested in Pakistan

Adam Gadahn, the former Orange County resident who became famous as "the American al Qaeda," has reportedly been arrested in Pakistan.

From the Orange County Register:

Conflicting reports surfaced Sunday that Adam Gadahn, the American-born spokesman for al-Qaida who converted to Islam at an Orange County mosque, may have been arrested in Pakistan but U.S. sources refused to confirm the news.

Gadahn, 31, who also goes by the name Azaam the American, was arrested by Pakistani intelligence officers in the southern city of Karachi, according to The Associated Press, quoting two officers and a government official. Earlier Sunday, Gadahn, considered al-Qaida's chief public spokesman and reportedly the head of the terrorist organization's broadcast arm, appeared in a video urging U.S. Muslims to attack their own country.

The FBI has not confirmed the reports of an arrest, said Laura Eimiller, a spokeswoman in the FBI's Los Angeles office.

Gadahn grew up on a goat farm in rural Riverside County and moved to Santa Ana to live with his grandparents, the late Dr. Carl Pearlman and his wife, Agnes, in the mid-1990s. It was here that he learned of Islam via the Internet and later fell in with a radical sect at the Islamic Society of Orange County.

Richard Nixon, Walt Disney, and now Adam Gadahn. What a rogues' gallery we've got in the OC. Um, anyway, this is definitely something the OCR has been on top of. When you've got a sect of Islam that's so radical it converts Jewish kids into terrorists, that's a pretty radical sect you've got there.

[above: Adam Gadahn does his al-Carnac the Magnificent routine on Al-Jazeera's Late Night Islamist Comedy Hour: "Zionists, the Paris metro system, and Salman Rushdie... Name three things that will burn in hell as infidels."]

Anyway, I'm glad they caught him. And Joshua Stanton would like to waterboard him.