Sunset Shooting Leaves Man Dead
By Janet Dang

Last Thursday, Michael and Jane Leong were visiting his mother in San Francisco’s Sunset District. Soon after he picked up his wife after class at San Francisco State University, something suddenly went horribly wrong.

Leong’s mother, whose name was not released, told police that she heard loud music and arguing emanating from a locked bedroom in her home in the 3700 block of Lawton. Then she heard two loud “popping” sounds. Frantically, she forced her way into the locked bedroom to discover her son and his wife shot in the head, lying in pools of blood.

The couple were rushed to San Francisco General Hospital. Jane Leong survived, barely. Hospital spokeswoman Gloria Rodriguez said Tuesday night that Leong remained in “very critical condition” and in intensive care. Her husband, who police say shot his spouse before turning the gun on himself, didn’t make it. He died at about 11:45 p.m. Dec. 2.

Police are investigating the shooting as a domestic violence incident.

The kind of violence that erupted in the Sunset and two days later in Sacramento is often sadly predictable, according to Becky Masaki, executive director of the Asian Women’s Shelter.

“Suicide and threats of suicide are also warning signs of domestic violence,” Masaki said. “Often we think about homicide and the threat of homicide and batterers will use ‘If you ever try to leave me, I’ll kill you,’ But just as often, they use ‘If you ever try to leave me, I’m going to kill myself.’”

Batterers’ threats of homicides and suicide as well as verbal and other kinds of abuse, such as brandishing a weapon, cannot be taken lightly, Masaki said.

“Friends and family members as well as institutions have a responsibility no to not ignore the problem, to support battered women...Domestic violence is very serious. It can lead to murder.”

In 1991, 60 percent of women killed in San Francisco died at the hands of their significant others. Last month, the San Francisco district attorney’s office released a report last month indicating that while domestic violence deaths fell 45 percent from 1997 to 1998, the five female homicide victims who died from domestic violence were all nonwhite. Three of them were Asian American -- two of Chinese descent and one of Filipino descent. The report concluded that law enforcement needed to do more to reach women isolated by cultural or linguistic barriers.

Masaki stressed that there is no excuse -- cultural or otherwise -- to inflict harm on spouses or significant others. “There something in every culture that historically has condoned domestic violence,” she acknowledged. “There are also values that condemn domestic violence.”

The Bay City News Service contributed to this report. For emergency support and shelter in the Bay Area, call Asian Women’s Shelter at 415-751-0880