2 Security Guards Killed, 1 Wounded in Rash of Shootings

Henry Wong didn’t have to be a cop. His family helped establish the Trust Savings Bank in Monterey Park and owns a prosperous Chinese restaurant in San Gabriel.

Those close to him said Wong, 40, joined the Los Angeles County Marshal’s Department in 1973 spurred by a sense of civic duty. “It was his way of trying to make sure that there was peace in the Asian community and to keep violence from happening,” a friend, Betty Chu, observed.

Henry Wong’s mission as peace keeper ended early Friday, when he was shot to death by an unknown assailant while working off duty as a security guard at a restaurant in Alhambra.

About three hours before Wong was shot, another security guard, Israel Martinez, 42, was fatally wounded while confronting an armed man behind a liquor store in downtown Los Angeles. Within minutes of Martinez’s shooting, a third security guard, Robert Burton, 20, was wounded during the robbery of a Vons market in Willowbrook.

Authorities said the rash of shootings was unrelated, but troubling nonetheless.

“Maybe the night was just an aberration,” said Lt. Fred Nixon, an LAPD spokesman, “but respect for authority does seem to be breaking down.”

The first of the three shootings occurred about 11 p.m. Thursday, when a man identified as Edward Vasquez, 21, began firing a semi-automatic pistol into the air while standing in an alley behind Wally’s Liquors at 1955 S. San Pedro St. Martinez, who was being paid to guard a taco stand next door, approached Vasquez and told him to stop shooting, according to detective Lt. Victor Ramirez.

A gunfight ensued and Martinez was shot once in the chest. Vasquez was hit once in the buttocks. Police arrested the suspect nearby and he was booked into the jail ward at County-USC Medical Center on suspicion of murder.

Martinez also was taken to the medical center and was declared dead at 2 a.m.

A half-hour after Martinez was shot and about 10 miles to the south, two armed and masked robbers entered the Vons market at 620 E. El Segundo Blvd., and ordered the manager to open the store’s safe.

A sheriff’s spokeswoman, Deputy Detta Roberts, said the robbers took $2,000 in cash, tied up the manager and ran to the back door. There, the robbers encountered Burton, an unarmed 20-year-old security guard, whom they shot once in the head.

A citizen who had seen the two men enter the store called the Carson sheriff’s substation and a special weapons team was dispatched. The team searched the store but the men had already escaped, Roberts said.

Burton was taken to Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center and underwent surgery Friday afternoon. His condition was described as critical.

When Burton was shot, Wong was working at the Savoy restaurant at 301 E. Valley Blvd., near his home in Alhambra. Earlier in the evening, according to investigators, Wong had ordered an unknown Asian man out of the restaurant after he created a disturbance and threatened patrons.

At 1:55 a.m., as the restaurant was closing, the same man reportedly returned to the restaurant and pulled open the front door. Firing into the restaurant, he shot Wong in the head, according to authorities. The assailant then fled.

Wong was pronounced dead two hours later at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena.

He was the first deputy county marshal to be shot to death, either on or off the job, since the 860-member department was formed more than 30 years ago, officials said.

Cmdr. Clyde Gatlin, Wong’s boss, said that Wong was in charge of the marshal’s fleet of cars and trucks.

“If you could say that anyone was loved by the department, this man was,” Gatlin said. “He was the type of person you always got along with, a professional all the way.”

Wong, who spoke fluent Cantonese, was born in Los Angeles, graduated from Alhambra High School, attended East Los Angeles College and worked at Nam’s, his family’s restaurant in San Gabriel, before entering law enforcement.

His younger brother, Hubert, said that Henry’s decision to become a police officer confounded some members of the financially well-off family.

“But he was the No. 1 son,” a grieving Hubert Wong said. “I guess he wanted to make it on his own and do something that he felt was important. He lived life to the fullest.”

Henry Wong was married. He and his wife, Judy, had no children.