LYNWOOD : Latino Groups Urge Probe by D.A. in Grocery Shooting

As Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives were deciding whether criminal charges should be filed against a Korean American grocer who wounded a teen-age shoplifting suspect, several Latino groups pressed Tuesday for a full investigation of the incident by the district attorney’s office.

The probe should begin immediately to prevent Saturday’s incident in Lynwood from becoming “another Latasha Harlins situation,” said Armando Soto Mayor, a spokesman for a coalition of groups called Chicanos Unidos.

Grocer Michael Kim told investigators he chased and shot the unidentified 14-year-old after the boy fled the market with a bag of cookies and then reached for what Kim thought was a weapon. The boy was in stable condition with a chest wound at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center.

The incident has been compared by some to the fatal 1991 shooting of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins by Korean-born grocer Soon Ja Du after the girl appeared to be stealing orange juice.

“You don’t shoot a 14-year-old boy over a 49-cent bag of cookies,” Mayor, a paralegal from South-Central Los Angeles, said at a news conference outside the Criminal Courts building in Downtown Los Angeles.

Others protesting Tuesday included Art Pulida, who leads a northeast Los Angeles ethnic equality group and demanded that Korean American merchants treat customers with “more respect.”