Double killing rattles Chinatown
L.A. police arrest a suspect in stabbings at Hop Sing Tong social club
Tiles clacked at the mahjongg tables in the main hall of the Hop Sing Tong, the slow cadence of a typical afternoon at one of Los Angeles’ oldest institutions.
The quiet broke when an intruder entered the Chinatown building and started to argue with a man in his 60s playing the game at a felt-covered table.
The suspect, Vinh Quok Dao, 37, demanded that one of the men give him $400 to pay for vehicle impound fees, police said. When the man refused, Dao pulled a 6-inch knife and attacked him and another man who tried to defend him, slashing both fatally in the neck, law enforcement sources said. One of the victims was the president of the tong, a Chinese fraternal organization.
Dao was arrested Friday afternoon in Rosemead. Los Angeles police detectives are now wrestling with a case that conjures memories of the violence wrought by tongs in the past.
The victims have not been publicly identified by police.
The Hop Sing Tong formed in San Francisco in 1870 to help Chinese immigrants — who faced severe discrimination and violence — band together. The one in Los Angeles was founded six years later.
Though the tong and
Chinese clubs remain a part of the Chinatown fabric, the center of power in L.A.’s huge Chinese community has shifted east into the San Gabriel Valley over the last few decades.
The boom in wealth from mainland Chinese and Asian trade has been felt much more in valley cities such as Alhambra, Monterey Park, San Gabriel and Industry than in Chinatown itself, which has struggled to reinvent itself over the years.
More recently, Chinatown has seen an increase in art galleries and trendy restaurants as well as new residential development spilling north from a rapidly gentrifying downtown L.A.
A law enforcement source said Dao was once a member of the Hop Sing Tong and had visited the club several times in recent days.
A man wearing a crime scene cleanup crew uniform answered the door at the association’s building in New Chinatown Plaza, but no staff members were available for comment.
Connie Vuong, a staff member with the Chinatown Business Improvement District, described the association as a social club that attracts an older clientele. Only members and associates of members are allowed inside.
The attack, she said, had left residents somewhat rattled with the Chinese New Year beginning Saturday.
“Everybody is calling us because this is a busy time,” she said. “We have a lot of tours, a lot of tourists coming in.”
Officers with the Los Angeles Police Department responded to the 900 block of North Broadway about 2:45 p.m. after receiving reports of gunshots.
“It was personal and isolated,” said Det. Patricia Hauck of the LAPD Central Division’s homicide unit. “We don’t know if he planned to go there and kill somebody.… He came back over and over again recently.”
Officials said there is no evidence the killings have any links to the notorious gang wars that plagued the groups years ago.
In the 1920s, the Hop Sing Tong and its rival, the Bing Kong Tong, waged war on each other to seize control of Chinatowns from San Diego to Seattle, killing numerous members of both groups. On the illicit side, they were known to run gambling dens, prostitution rings and extortion schemes. They also helped immigrants find jobs and places to live, dispensed justice and settled disputes in the insular communities.
As Chinese Americans assimilated throughout the century, the tongs’ power waned and the violent rivalother ries subsided, but they remained vital in urban Chinatowns, such as those in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles.
A gang war associated with the Hop Sing Tong in San Francisco erupted in 1977 over control of the fireworks trade. In 1994, the president of the tong in Los Angeles, Phillip Lieu, was shot and killed after a group meeting.
Inside the hall Friday, four mah-jongg players sat in an area with about 30 chairs and a faded red linoleum floor. Headlines in Chinese-language newspapers stacked on a black table in the center of the hall were dominated by the stabbings.
Employees and owners at the businesses near the Hop Sing Tong said they were slightly on edge, even as tourists buzzed through the gift shops and eateries inside Chinatown Central Square, seemingly unaware of the bloodshed that took place the day before.
“We have not had troubles here,” said Jennifer Hanna, a 50-year-old cashier at Realm, an art and design store just 50 feet from the entrance to the Hop Sing Tong. “Today I feel a little apprehensive.”
Employees in the square said the members of the Hop Sing Tong mostly kept to themselves. Its clientele, mostly older Chinese men, could be seen puffing on cigarettes on benches near the building’s front door or playing mah-jongg when the doors were left open, but they did little to make their presence otherwise known.
James Pham, a 29-yearold waiter at Blossom, said he was in the back of the restaurant prepping for a dinner rush that would never come when the stabbings occurred. LAPD officers moved quickly through the square, he said, evacuating businesses and searching for the assailant. The rush of police was slightly unnerving, said Pham, whose family owned the cafe that turned into Blossom.
“My mom said it was the first time anything like this has happened,” he said. “We’ve been here since 2003.”