Posted on 06/13/2011 5:40:34 PM PDT by Altura Ct.
On the blustery morning of April 16, Hoang Nguyen and his wife, Yen, left their Dutchtown apartment to go grocery shopping, a Saturday routine. After bidding goodbye to their 25-year-old son, Kenny, the couple strolled east on Chippewa Street, crossing Spring and Giles avenues, then headed south on Grand Boulevard toward their market.
Hoang, a 72-year-old retired schoolteacher and avid painter, immigrated with his wife to St. Louis three-and-a-half years ago from their native Vietnam. The couple wanted to be closer to their daughter, Lan, who'd married an American and settled in south county. Kenny joined his parents six months later. By now the Nguyens were fixtures in Dutchtown's growing Vietnamese community and active parishioners at Resurrection of Our Lord. Recently Hoang had begun taking English classes at the International Institute of St. Louis nearby.
The Nguyens ticked off the items on their shopping list — fish, vegetables, noodles — filling their pushcart with grocery bags. Security-camera footage shows the diminutive husband embracing a friend at the cash register as his 59-year-old wife laughs nearby.
When the Nguyens left the grocer at about 10:30, they took a shortcut home through the alley that parallels Chippewa to the south. They'd been taking this route for months; though it made Yen nervous, the alley's gradual slope made it easier for her elderly husband to maneuver their pushcart.
Midway down the alley, Nguyen's cart stopped suddenly — seemingly for no reason. "It was like it was a sign saying we shouldn't go that way," Yen says in hindsight. When Hoang got the wheels moving again, they looked up and saw two young men and two young women approaching.
Moments later, one of the men charged.
Hoang stepped in front of his wife to protect her, she recalls. The man grabbed Hoang's jacket as he pleaded for mercy, shouting, "No, no, no!"
"Jason" considers himself a typical fourteen-year-old. "I got a good family background," he asserts by phone from his mother's house in St. Louis County, on a morning when he decided to skip school after oversleeping.
Jason, who asked RFT to use a pseudonym, recently moved to the county from south city, where he attended Fanning Middle School, near Grand Boulevard and not far from the Nguyen household. It was during his middle-school years that he was introduced to Knockout King.
"I always hit 'em hard," he says. "If you don't hit 'em hard, they don't go far."
Jason is talking about a ritual — those who participate call it a game — that has been adopted by young teens across the St. Louis area. Once an elusive phenomenon that flew under the local radar, the game exploded onto the collective consciousness with the media reports that followed the attack on Hoang Nguyen.
Along with a generalized sense of fear, there was befuddlement: What would drive a young person to sucker punch a defenseless stranger purely for sport?
"It was just a little game," says Jason. "We used to walk to where a lot of people be at and hit 'em. If one of the homeboys didn't knock him out, then the other would come. Whoever knock him out would be king."
The rules of Knockout King are straightforward, according to Jason and other former players interviewed for this article. A lead attacker is chosen from among a group of boys, usually young adolescents. Next a target is picked out. Then the attacker either charges the unsuspecting victim or motions for his attention. When the target turns or lifts his head, the attacker strikes. If the victim is felled by the punch, the group usually scatters. But if the target withstands the blow, other members of the group may follow up with their fists to finish the job. "Some people kick, but I ain't used to kick," says Jason. "I just punched."
Jason says he began playing when he was about eleven and that his group once knocked out five people in one night. Did victims ever lose consciousness? "Probably," he concedes. "I would think about it afterward, but then the thoughts go away, like it never happened."
For some victims of the assaults, the memories eventually fade away as well.
Others find it harder to forget.
Harder for 80-year-old Rafael Quiroz, who was hit on the back of his head last year while standing on a corner of Michigan Avenue in broad daylight. The blow knocked him to the ground and bloodied him. "Physically he's OK now, but mentally he won't go on walks like he used to," says Quiroz's granddaughter, Lucy Rosales.
Harder for John Stuhlman, 36, who was hit in the head last year while walking home from work, leaving him with dizzy spells that persisted for two weeks. "I freaked out and took off down the street, and he tried to chase me," recalls Stuhlman, who now avoids walking the streets late at night. "He was upset because I didn't fall down. He even said something like, "I hit you, and you fall down.'"
Harder for John Henry Muhrer, 35, who was assaulted by a group of kids in near Tower Grove Park a few years ago. The lead attacker distracted him by tossing a small bike in his path, then swooped in. "He hit me pretty hard," says Muhrer. "Never saw it coming."
More here:
http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2011-06-09/news/knockout-king-elex-murphy-hoang-nguyen-dutchtown-murder/
“Brainpan”?? You are too kind. These feral city scum may not even have brain stems.
Yes. That's exactly what it is and we shouldn't hesitate to say so.
I wish people would quit nodding to the gods of PC by saying 'Amish' when they mean blacks.
Really? Because Missouri is a "shall issue" state. The fact is for a all the "I'd kill 'em all" bravado one sees in these threads, if you pull a pistol and shoot an unarmed person before they hit you, you're pretty much screwed as far as the legal system goes. It may be wrong it's that way, but then again we can't allow every potential fist fight be ended pre-emptively by gunshot either.
And you might not get a chance after they hit you. So best to be aware of your surroundings and avoid areas where this is most likely to happen.
It’s hard to tell the good from the bad, though. I got sucker-punched in the face when I was 13 leaving a movie theater (Ithaca, NY 1964). I’ve been shouldered hard by black guys walking the other direction on public sidewalks (Columbus, OH ~1990). My wife and I got threatened returning to our car in a parking lot and paid the bum to leave us alone (Palo Alto, CA ~1997). I thank my lucky stars none of this lead to a serious or deadly altercation. I’m just an average, law-abiding guy going about his innocent daily business and I’ve been beaten, threatened and accosted three times in “safe” areas. It’s no wonder people cross the street when they see the scum walking toward them.
I don't know where you got that, but you better hope they run after you pull your weapon if you think that. Because if you leave 4 unarmed people dead in an alley without evidence of battery on you, you're gonna probably get the needle unless they left behind a note or something saying they were heading out to mug people.
Yeah Jason suuurre.
And how about we call the girl Heather
So now not only will we not ID race but we will give the perpetrators all White names also
Stupid press
Someone died from this in Fort Collins, Colorado a few days ago:
“Engle’s uncle, Roger Duke, told 7NEWS his nephew was “sucker punched” by a man as he walked down the street with Duke’s son. Engle fell down and his head struck the ground, Duke said.
“The uncle said there was no confrontation – his nephew happened to walk between two men and one of them turned and punched him in the face. Duke said he believes the men were gang members.
“The uncle said Engle, the father of three children, suffered brain death.”
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/28156616/detail.html
Double ditto. How sad.
Flash sense of empowerment from Erkel Mugabe with no background in terminal ballistics ..... Agree with ya.
Enlighten em as encountered if possible.
Stay safe....
The first time I heard of this kind of thing, years ago, it was going on over in the formally Great Britain. The assailants were not black. It’s a punk hooligan thing.
Yeah, so much for that “unity” crap
Actually they are taught that the civil war was fought for the same reasons all wars are fought. Greedy rich white people. 300,000 dead union soldiers were just greedy. The fact that all the states on one side were free and all the states on the other side were slave. That was a coincidence.
Begone, thou hast no business injecting reason into a thread on the internet! Begone Satan! How dare ye besmirch the sacred internet with intelligence and logic. /s
You are of course quite correct. However, the internet Rambo will never listen.
Jason, who asked RFT to use a pseudonym
Yeah Jason suuurre.
And how about we call the girl Heather
So now not only will we not ID race but we will give the perpetrators all White names also
Stupid press
Don’t be stupid. Jason and Heather are not “white names.” I know several black people personally, and they have names like Josh, Ashley, Erica, Renee, and Dana. Sure there are a few more “black” names like LaKeisha or Tamika. To be honest though, I work for a coffee shop with a largely black clientele and most of them have “white” names: Mike, Darrel, Justin, and yes, Jason. Oh, and I have written “Heather” on cups belonging to black girls, too.
Besides, a lot of the white people have names like Chemere and Gage.
I get that you are irritated with a bunch of minority centered pc-crap. I am too. We can’t keep defending criminals by playing the race card. But please, don’t be ignorant of the fact that there are in fact plenty of black men named Jason. Because you honestly sound racist.
In the Summer of 1969 my date and I were going to an Asheville Tourists baseball game. To get to the stadium we passed through a fairly small area called “Little Africa”.
As we were stopped at a red light, a white Pontiac convertible with seven Black youths suddenly pulled in front of us blocking us in. One of them yelled an obscenity then they all began jumping out.
I immediately reached under the seat for the Browning Hi-Power and before I had it out, one of them yelled, “he’s got a gun”. They all jumped back in and took off.
I learned a couple of lessons from that. First of all, I probably should have rolled up the window and locked the door before going for the gun as they would probably have gotten to me if they had really been determined. Also it was illegal at that time in North Carolina to be carrying the gun. I am still glad I had it and would have used it. In fact that is just what I was about to do.
Actually they are taught that the civil war was fought for the same reasons all wars are fought. Greedy rich white people. 300,000 dead union soldiers were just greedy. The fact that all the states on one side were free and all the states on the other side were slave. That was a coincidence.
I just took a concealed carry class in Oklahoma and it's the same here. They have to brandish a weapon before it's considered a righteous shooting. In fact there was a term the instructor used "reciprocity", which means that a lot of states will uphold the CCW laws of other states and it carries weight through a chain of states from Nevada to Florida.
At the start of the war at least 4 of the eventual Union states, six if you count NJ (something like 100 quasi-slaves) and WV, had legal slavery.
By the end of the war all had emancipated their slaves without compensation except KY and DE (less than 200 by that point).
There is, BTW, a large and vocal group on FR who agree with the above statement. The war, they believe, had nothing to do with slavery and its disproportionate presence in the two regions was purely coincidental. They are, of course, full of cr*p.
I hope he dies of aids contacted by being raped by a homo serial killer who shares his cell.
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