Officers Raid Suspected Gang Homes

A platoon of investigators raided homes in four cities Thursday for evidence against a gang responsible for the slaying of an Oscar-winning actor and suspected in the spraying of gunfire at a state senator’s home and a drive-by shooting in San Juan Capistrano.

More than 132 officers from Los Angeles and Orange counties participated in early morning raids at a dozen homes of suspected gang members in Los Angeles, Monterey Park, Long Beach and Rosemead.

Police made no arrests but recovered three guns, ammunition and other evidence, said Tori Richards, spokeswoman for the Orange County district attorney’s office.

A Los Angeles Police Department source who requested anonymity said the target of the sweep was the so-called Oriental Lazy Boys. Members of the gang were convicted in the 1996 murder of actor Dr. Haing S. Ngor, and according to the source, were allegedly responsible for the shooting in January at the home of state Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles).

The latter was a case of mistaken identity, according to the police source. Polanco has a son who is not a gang member, but who has the same first name as a rival of the gang, according to the source.

That rival is the boyfriend of a girl who lives on the Polancos’ street in Mount Washington. When the suspects asked people where someone by that name lived, they were mistakenly directed to Polanco’s house, the source said. No one was injured.

The Thursday raid occurred after two investigators from the Orange County district attorney’s office connected a January shooting on the Santa Ana Freeway to the Polanco and Haing Ngor incidents, Richards said.

On Jan. 16, five people were driving from a beach party in San Diego County to Los Angeles on the Santa Ana Freeway around 1 a.m. when they apparently mistook another driver, a member of the U.S. Navy, for a rival gang member. They began shooting at him and flashing gang signs, Richards said.

The Navy man was not injured and called 911 on his cell phone. The California Highway Patrol arrested the five men.

Two investigators noticed pictures in the car of gang members they remembered from a 1996 investigation of Ngor’s murder. The investigators had been LAPD detectives then.

“They looked at the pictures and went, ‘Wait a minute, we know who these guys are,’ ” Richards said.

In 1998, three admitted gang members were convicted of shooting Ngor in the carport of his Los Angeles home. Authorities believed the motive was robbery.

Ngor, 55, had escaped his native Cambodia during the bloody reign of the Khmer Rouge. He won an Oscar for his role as a Cambodian photographer in “The Killing Fields,” which depicted that era.

The raid sought evidence to be used in the prosecutions of several cases.

The five people arrested in the San Juan Capistrano freeway shooting were later charged with attempted murder and other counts.

Two of the suspects are teenagers and are being held without bail at juvenile hall in Orange County. The three adults, Ruby So, Cam Peak and Johnnerson Lim, are being held at the Orange County Jail.

If convicted, they face a maximum sentence of life in prison. Prosecutors are seeking to try the juveniles in adult court, Richards said.