It was another afternoon punctuated by the clacking tiles of mah-jongg games underway at the venerable Hop Sing Tong social club in Chinatown when the attack occurred.
An assailant entered the Chinese fraternal association’s headquarters, which dates back more than a century, and moved to the main hall, where rows of tables are set up for mah-jongg and other games. The attacker fatally stabbed the club’s president and another man while they were playing their game.
Los Angeles police detectives are now trying to sort out this mystery, which has haunting echos of violence that generations ago marred such organizations both in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
A law enforcement source told The Times that police believe they know the identity of the attacker and that the slayings appear to be related to a personal dispute.
The source said the suspect was once a member of Hop Sing Tong Benevolent Assn, and had visited the club several times in recent days. He returned Thursday and got into a verbal dispute with one of the victims before stabbing him, the source said. The second victim apparently tried to come to the defense of the other man.
Neither the suspect nor the dead men have been publicly identified by police.
Connie Vuong, a staff member with the Chinatown Business Improvement District, said the two victims of Thursday’s stabbing were members at Hop Sing Tong, including the association’s president.
The attack, she said, was not believed to be random, though she would not say how she knew that.
A man wearing the uniform of a crime scene cleanup crew answered the door at the association’s building in New Chinatown Plaza, but no staff members were available for comment.
Vuong described the association as a social club that attracts an older clientele. Only members and associates of members are allowed inside, and Vuong said that meant the assailant likely knew someone at the club.
The attack, she said, had left residents somewhat rattled with the Chinese New Year approaching on 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 were dispatched to the 900 block of North Broadway about 2:45 p.m. in response to 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.”
Hop Sing Tong, one of many benevolent associations that Chinese immigrants founded in the second half of the 19th century, has seen deadly violence before.
In 1994, the president of the social club, Phillip Lieu, was repeatedly shot in the head by another member as he left the private club one night.
Founded in San Francisco in 1870, Hop Sing Tong opened a chapter in L. A. about six years later.
The club was particularly important for networking among Chinese immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, providing kinship at a time when many relied on family and geographic ties for housing and jobs.
Inside the hall Friday, four mah-jongg players sat in an area with about 30 chairs and a faded red floor. In the back was a kitchen. Headlines in Chinese-language newspapers stacked on a black table in the center of the hall were dominated by the stabbing.
People at the hall declined to speak extensively about the attack, noting that the suspect had yet to be apprehended.
Employees and owners at the businesses neighboring Hop Sing Tong admitted they were slightly on edge, even as tourists browsed through the gift shops and eateries of 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. “Today I feel a little apprehensive.”
Employees in the square said Hop Sing Tong patrons mostly kept to themselves. The club’s members, 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. Other than that, they did little to make their presence known, area workers said.
William Louie, 80, whose family has owned the K. G. Louie art store next to the Hop Sing Tong building for decades, said the social club is a vestige of the square’s origins. While a good portion of the businesses in and around the square have been owned by Chinese families for years, more and more newcomers have arrived.
One newer business is the Vietnamese cafe Blossom, around the corner. James Pham, a 29-year-old waiter there, said he was in the back of the restaurant prepping for dinner service when the stabbing occurred. LAPD officers moved quickly through the square, he said, evacuating businesses and searching for the attacker. The rush of cops was slightly unnerving, said Pham, whose family owned another cafe at the location for more than a decade.
“My mom said it was the first time anything like this has happened,” he said. “We’ve been here since 2003.”
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