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.
The Ungs found freedom here, but much of the rest of the American dream
eluded them. The parents split up and Sok grew up with his mother in San
Francisco. He joined the Marines right out of high school as a way of
relieving his mother of the burden of supporting him and as a means to a
college education.
The elder Mr. Ung remarried and settled in Long Beach, home to an
estimated 70,000 resettled Cambodians and their families. He has barely
managed to scrape by, and his face betrays not only his grief but the
rigors of a life in perpetual want.
Narin Kem, editor of the Khmer-language newspaper Serey Pheap News,
which is published in Long Beach, said that while Long Beach had welcomed
the Cambodians, there was too little police protection in their
neighborhoods and too few Cambodian-speaking police officers. Mr. Kem said
many Cambodian families were trying to move to safer areas, becoming
refugees once again.
He said that there had been numerous gang-style killings in Asian
sections of the city in recent years, but that little attention had been
paid until now. "Does the life of a marine matter more than somebody
else's?" he asked.
Corporal Ung was assigned to a combat engineer battalion. He arrived in
Kuwait with the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit in February and crossed
into Iraq in the early hours of the war, said his platoon sergeant,
Gunnery Sgt. Graham Hilson.
The unit moved into Nasiriya, scene of
some of the heaviest fighting in the war, and took part in the
diversionary attack to cover the rescue of Pfc. Jessica D. Lynch on the
night of April 1. Two weeks later, he was injured when
a marine patrolling with him stepped on an unexploded bomblet from an
American artillery round. His family was told at first that he was
seriously injured and missing in action, but he was located a day later
and his wounds proved relatively minor.
Corporal Ung was treated on the battlefield and returned to action
three days later. "He said he wanted to get back to his squad," Sergeant
Hilson said. "I think it's a real tragic thing that this guy was willing
to go over and give his life for his country and he made it back, only to
have one of the people he was protecting take it from him."
Corporal Ung's older brother, Pulak Ung, 26, who lives in San
Francisco, said he worried every time he heard that his brother was
spending time in Long Beach, a place he considered as dangerous as a war
zone.
"It makes me feel like we should focus more on this country," Pulak Ung
said. "There's a war going on here in the streets. You've got a kid who
had no problems with anybody, served his country � and he got shot.
Something has to be done."
Corporal Ung's body will receive a Buddhist blessing on Sunday morning
in San Francisco. He will be buried with full military honors at the
Golden Gate National Cemetery on Monday. Mr. Tho's funeral will be on
Wednesday in Long Beach.
