Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 5, 1993 TAG: 9304050032
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARGARET EDDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
FAMILY SOUGHT PEACE, BUT FOUND VIOLENT DEATH
Four months have passed and winter has turned to spring since Yung Lee buried her brother, Kyu Jin Jung. Still, she cannot bring herself to write to her three sisters, who live in the countryside near Pusan, South Korea, to tell them of his passing.They will, she believes, never forgive her for persuading Jung to emigrate to the United States two years ago with his pregnant wife and son.
Nor, in a culture where guns are scarce and elders revered, are they likely to comprehend the circumstances of his death: shot twice in the head with a .32-caliber handgun during the Dec. 1 robbery of a clothing store owned by Yung Lee and her husband.
Or this:
Erik Charles, Jung's accused killer, is a child. Fifteen at the time of the robbery, the son of Haitian immigrants, Charles has acknowledged conspiring with two other ninth-grade boys to rob the Manhattan Clothing store. The three are expected to come to trial in May.
"You saw the kids in court," Lee said as she paced back and forth in her store's stockroom, a sleeping baby strapped to her back, a grim smile set on her broad face. "They were smiling, talking. A life has been destroyed because of the things they done. They destroy mine. They destroy my brother's. . . .
"Maybe the next generation, they will learn. Meanwhile, there's going to be more crime, more killing."
Statistics say Yung Lee is almost certainly correct. In Virginia and the nation, killers are getting younger. The young are getting more dangerous.
A recent report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Washington-based Center for the Study of Social Policy notes that the juvenile violent-crime arrest rate in Virginia rose 42 percent from 1986 to 1991.
As recently as 1986, there were 29 Virginia juveniles arrested for homicide, according to state police records. By 1991, the figure had soared to 67; last year it was 76. Most frightening, this growth occurred as the 15- to 24-year-old population was declining; beginning in 1995, that violence-prone youth population will begin to rise sharply.
"Not only do these youngsters not have any respect for other people's lives; they don't put any value on their own lives," said Joe Morrissey, commonwealth's attorney in Richmond, which in 1991 had the most juvenile homicide arrests - 15 - of any Virginia locality. Norfolk was second with 10; Portsmouth third, with seven.
"It's gotten to where, `You got a beef? You insulted my girlfriend? Hell, I'm going to shoot you.' It's like the wild, wild West," said Morrissey.
Youth is not the only theme in the tragedy that links Kyu Jin Jung and Erik Charles. There is the irony of two immigrant families crossing oceans and continents to find a better life, only to see their dreams crushed by harsh reality. There are ethnic undercurrents in the shooting of Asian shopkeepers serving an African-American clientele in a racially mixed neighborhood. And there is the question of how guns come to be in the hands of children.
But overshadowing all else for Yung Lee is the daunting discovery that three children whom no one in her family had met could so instantly and permanently alter their lives.
"Now I fear everyone that comes in. You don't know who's going to be next," she said. "Our whole lives are different. You wouldn't think [the loss of] one person could change that much."
Lee's sister-in-law, who speaks little English, and her two children plan to move back to South Korea next month. Lee and her husband tentatively have reached a wrenching decision also: to emigrate home when they have settled their financial affairs in a year or two.
It is a long odyssey from the day 16 years ago when Lee arrived in America as a 21-year-old military bride. Then, she was flush with enthusiasm for a rich new homeland that, she believed, would offer greater opportunities for a woman than did male-dominated South Korea.
By 1990, a divorce and 10 years of supporting herself as a machine operator, before remarriage, had sobered Lee. But she and her husband, Ho, still were optimistic enough about their future in Richmond to encourage Kyu Jin Jung to join them that year.
They had recently moved south - "to the country," as Yung Lee puts it - to escape escalating violence and a declining economy in New York City. In Richmond, they opened the Manhattan Clothing store, soon adding a second shop in another Richmond shopping center and a third in Emporia. Jewelry and flashy fashions were the wares.
Of her four siblings, Lee as a child had been closest to Jung, her only brother. Quiet and easygoing, 40 at the time of his death, Jung had grown up as the apple of his family's eye. "My brother never even had to walk on the dirt. My mother carried him all the time. . . . He was a prince," she said, recalling the family's joy at producing a son.
Lee was delighted at his move to America, but Jung found in Richmond less than a promised land. In his two-plus years there, the store was robbed often. Several times, a front window was smashed; once, robbers came in through the roof. And once, they backed a truck through a brick wall at the store's rear. But there was no physical violence.
That changed on the morning of Dec. 1. According to testimony at a preliminary hearing, Jung and a co-worker were alone at the store when Erik Charles and Curtis Johnson entered.
Charles later described his role in the robbery as to "shoot people," according to a detective's testimony. Johnson's job was to "grab stuff"; and the third youth, Terrell Gates, was to drive a getaway car stolen the previous night.
In a statement to police, Charles said he began shooting when Jung moved toward a ceremonial sword hanging behind the jewelry case. Three bullets struck Jung, who died two days later at the Medical College of Virginia.
Uiwon Lanning, who was preparing rice for lunch at the back of the store, came forward after the shots and encountered Charles, according to testimony. She, too, was shot several times, probably avoiding death only because the gun misfired twice when it was aimed point-blank at her head.
According to prosecutors, Lanning will testify at the trial that Charles said, "She saw my face. . . . I got to finish my job," and later, "Let's get what we came for. Let's get out of here."
They did not, of course, look the part, the three young men who sat side by side in juvenile court, dressed in blue jeans, sweat shirts and sneakers. If anything, their collective appearance suggested a slightly dazed curiosity about the courtroom proceedings.
Nor do testimony or interviews with a handful of acquaintances adequately explain so vicious an act. All three defendants are from broken homes, but all also had supportive relatives in court. Johnson especially is recalled as a friendly, outgoing youth at Huguenot High School, where he enrolled last fall after a New York judge ordered him into an uncle's custody.
Of the three, this much is known:
Charles also entered Huguenot last fall, after being sent south from Queens, N.Y., to live with his father. The elder Charles works in maintenance. The mother, a nurse, attended the hearing, quietly reading a Bible outside the courtroom and dabbing at her eyes with a tissue as she listened to testimony.
An older stepbrother is in college, but Charles has fared less well academically. A court psychologist testified that his overall IQ is 68 - borderline mentally retarded. But she believes his abilities are higher, and his school records suggest "a solid, low average" student, the psychologist said. According to testimony, he had no prior juvenile record.
Detective H.T. Croxton said Charles' explanation for the robbery was simple: "I just wanted to try to buy some clothes for school."
Johnson, also 15 at the time of the killing, was born in Manhattan, where his mother still lives. His father recently was committed to a minimum-security federal prison in Danbury, Conn. Like Charles, Johnson had no prior juvenile record, except for the court-ordered transfer of custody to his uncle. Johnson's aunt, uncle and grandmother attended the hearing.
Law-enforcement officials theorize that the gun used in the shooting was stolen from the uncle.
Gates, 16 at the time of the killing, has had several run-ins with juvenile authorities. Juvenile court records are not public, and the sources of his trouble are unknown. He has not been jailed, however. Gates' parents are divorced. He was brought to police headquarters several weeks after the shooting by his mother, who urged him to "tell the truth." Both parents were in court.
"They're just young kids who get out here without comprehending what takes place sometimes," said Edward Ned Gates Jr., Terrell's father, during a break in the hearing. The elder Gates, a stock clerk at a recently closed Richmond store, attributed his son's problems to "going along with the crowd."
For Yung Lee, such explanations are inadequate. Something more deep-seated in the American psyche is at fault, she contends. "Robbing a person, I could understand. But killing the person, making sure they're dead?"
She wishes that the news to be sent to her sisters might be of her own death. Or even her husband's. "It's our store, our business. But what had he done?
"Ever since this happened, I can't think straight," said Lee, hugging her arms tightly to her chest. "Nothing is the same. I don't think it's ever going to come back the same."
Keywords:
FATALITY