A Student, a Shopkeeper and a Moment of Tragedy

The weatherworn market that Jo Won Kim and his wife tended on a quiet Highland Park street was a familiar stop for the students attending Franklin High School a few blocks away. The struggling market was also a frequent target for youthful shoplifters who, some residents said, viewed Kim as a soft touch.

It was the place where Brenda Hughes, a Franklin senior, a popular former cheerleader and softball player, stopped by Thursday morning with a carload of friends on their way to school.

And that is when everything changed.

By Friday, Hughes’ family was in mourning and Kim was behind bars facing murder charges. And the high school campus and neighborhood were trying to make sense of a tragic clash, spawned by suspicion and bad luck, between people who had nothing to do with one another.

Apparently convinced that Hughes’ friends had shoplifted, Kim fired his handgun into the car, killing the 17-year-old, who was only along for the ride, police said.

Hughes and a girlfriend never got out of the back seat while their three male pals went inside. A confrontation unfolded inside as one of the youths tried to slip out with a beer, according to police.

When the youths left the store, Kim followed close behind, pulling his .45-caliber pistol when they piled into the car. Hughes had insisted on a seat near the window in the back. That, police said, was where the store owner sprayed three shots without provocation, hitting her and wounding a male passenger in the leg.

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Hughes was a college-bound girl who liked to party and loved her school, friends said. Kim is a 51-year-old Korean immigrant who had eked out a living as a house painter and lived with his wife in a $146-a-month studio. Two years ago, he used his life savings and money borrowed from a relative to buy the market. He and his wife had been trying to unload the property for months. Perhaps, she suggested, he “just snapped.”

Outside a makeshift shrine at the market Friday, Hughes’ best friend, Teresa Cardona, who had sat between the two backseat shooting victims, wailed as she knelt before a row of votive candles and scribbled remembrances.

On Thursday, waiting for the youths to come out of the store, the girls had “no idea” that anything was going wrong, Cardona said.

After the shooting, the teenagers sped to a nearby fire station and summoned help.

“What am I supposed to do now?” Cardona asked Friday.

Kim’s wife, who was asleep in the store at the time of the 9:30 a.m. incident, was agonizing over the same question.

As she waited outside Parker Center to visit Kim, Wha Sung Kim, 46, wished that she was the one in custody--not her husband.

The shooting evoked memories of recent high-profile cases in which teenagers were shot by storekeepers who believed the youths were stealing. An outcry arose two years ago after a Lynwood merchant wounded an amateur boxer during a confrontation over a box of cookies. Memories are still vivid of the fatal shooting of Latasha Harlins, a 15-year-old girl killed in 1991 after a scuffle that followed an argument over a bottle of orange juice. The Lynwood merchant was not prosecuted. The storekeeper who shot Harlins was convicted but received probation.

In the latest case, Los Angeles police said videotape from a surveillance camera in the store showed Kim stopping one of the youths who was apparently trying to steal a beer. The tape shows the young man returning the beer and then holding open his jacket, apparently to show Kim he had nothing else, Sgt. William Guerrero said.

Guerrero said the youths did not appear to have threatened Kim. He said Kim did not fire until after the three youths got back in their car.

“They never exhibited any acts of violence or made any threatening gestures,” Guerrero said.

Police said the youths told them they got rid of at least two beers while they were racing to the fire station. It was unclear whether those were stolen from the store.

Pilfered beers had become a frustrating fact of life at Henry’s Market, which had long dispensed beverages and candy to the neighborhood of humble bougainvillea-draped houses and small apartments. The Kims were only making about $20 a day, Kim’s wife said.

A sobbing and distraught Wha Sung Kim said in an interview that her husband had suffered tremendous pressure because of her mental illness and the constant problems with shoplifters.

“Every time someone steals, that means we are in debt that much more. Things got so bad we put up the store for sale, but nobody wants to buy it,” she said.

Some residents who patronized the store said Kim often looked the other way as young shoplifters filled their pockets and, on occasion, even threatened him. But other neighbors said Kim seemed edgy and suspicious of shoppers. “He always was in a bad mood,” said Ann Pulado, 23.

The thefts only aggravated Kim’s gnawing worry over his wife’s depression, Wha Sung Kim said.

She said her husband immigrated in 1976, hoping to work as an electronics engineer, but ended up painting houses. He bought the store so he could be with her while he worked.

Wha Sung Kim said she slept through the killing. Groggy from antidepressant medication, she said, she lay down on a mat under the store counter.

“My husband was under so much stress that I think he just snapped for a moment.”

She expressed remorse on Kim’s behalf.

“I feel terrible about what has happened to the girl. I am sorry for what has happened. But I want people to know that my husband wouldn’t hurt anyone intentionally,” she said. “He is a good Christian. Please have mercy on my husband. I don’t know of anyone who could put up with someone as sick as me.”

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A different sort of anguish was evident in Hughes’ Highland Park home, where her father, Luis Hughes, sat in a darkened living room, distraught beyond the powers of speech. His wife was in El Salvador tending to her ailing mother and received the tragic news long distance.

And the air was subdued at Franklin High School, where Hughes was remembered as a well-liked girl who hoped to attend Cal State Long Beach after graduating next year.

Teachers armed themselves with a “grief packet” offering suggestions on coping. Football players were planning to put the letter ‘B’ on their helmets for Friday night’s game against Garfield.

Some of Hughes’ closest friends surrounded themselves with symbols of her life, laughing and crying as they gazed at pictures and swapped stories about her.

A cheerleading buddy, Desiree Gutierrez, 16, wore Hughes’ sweatshirt from a national cheerleading competition in Jacksonville, Fla., last year. It was a reminder of one of her slain friend’s happiest times, Gutierrez said, wiping away tears from her reddened face.

Other friends who gathered at the shooting site Friday described Hughes as a pretty and ebullient girl, nicknamed “Exscape” for her skill at evading the suitors who forever seemed to flutter about her.

“Nice, cheerful, school pride--she was always there for us,” said Eddy Martinez, a 17-year-old Franklin junior. “You needed a friend? Brenda. You wanted somebody to party with? Brenda.”

English teacher Dawn Kelley said Hughes was maturing. She quit cheerleading and got a job after school to save up for a car and worked hard to improve her grades.

In an autobiographical essay she wrote for Kelley’s class, Hughes said she hoped to be a social worker because she was a good listener and liked helping people.

Hughes’ friends recalled her comical mock voices and how she could only relate stories by physically acting out the plot lines.

They also noticed how she constantly seemed to hum the same song. For a long time, the friends could not figure out what tune was so stubbornly stuck in her head. Then they recognized it.

“It was the graduation song,” Gutierrez said. “It’s not right, because now she won’t ever hear it.”

Times staff writer Abigail Goldman contributed to this story.