Lawyer will wait for subpoena to release diary

Those in the newspaper business will tell you that as journalists, we meet all types of interesting people. In addition to that, it’s not uncommon for people to call us and tell us their problems, in hopes that we can help shed light on issues they are dealing with.

It’s also not uncommon for us to have to turn them away because their problems are better left to law enforcement or other entities that can help them solve the issue, rather than just report on it.

We also sometimes get unsolicited mail, to include letters from inmates who want to tell “their side” of the story so people know they were unjustly convicted, the occasional threat or letters that cuss us out for various reasons.

One newspaper, however, got a different type of package that is connected with the deadly shooting that occurred over the weekend in Laguna Woods.

According to an Associated Press report, David Chou, 68, sent a handwritten seven-volume diary, written in Chinese, along with a flash drive, to the World Journal office in Los Angeles that arrived after the shooting. In it, he titled the pages, “Diary of an Angel Destroying Independence,” in reference to Taiwan’s self-government. His alleged political hatred of Taiwan was behind the deadly attack, according to news reports.

“The diary pages were received in the daily mail Monday, one day after authorities say Chou opened fire at a lunch gathering of older parishioners at Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian Church ...” the AP report said. “The newspaper didn’t report the content of the diaries and nobody there apparently read through them before sending them to the police through the paper’s attorney, said an employee who declined to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak openly.”

It’s unfortunate that the diaries weren’t received before the shooting happened, but perhaps that was done by design. It’s not clear, however, what was in the papers.

The newspaper’s attorney, Maxwell Lin of West Covina, said he’ll share the papers with police when he gets a subpoena.

“We have no intention of withholding anything,” he said in the AP report.

He did not confirm the title of the papers.

“The document will speak for itself, but how you call it is subject to a reporter’s interpretation,” Lin said.

He also said he didn’t fully read the diaries and said time will tell how important they are.

Sometimes mail we receive isn’t very important, but in this case, it’s very likely that those papers contain important information that could lead to police better understanding his motive.