Wednesday, September 29, 2010
The Cambodian grandmother who killed three family members before turning the gun on herself a week ago wore the eerie expression of a "smiley face" as she stalked relatives through their West Seattle home, her daughter recalls.
KEN LAMBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES
West Seattle shooting survivor Thyda Luellen Phan, center, gets help walking Tuesday as she arrived at the Khemarak Pothiram Buddhist Temple from her sister Pary Sok, left, and her cousin Itaily Sun.
West Seattle shooting survivor Thyda Luellen Phan, center, gets help walking Tuesday as she arrived at the Khemarak Pothiram Buddhist Temple from her sister Pary Sok, left, and her cousin Itaily Sun.
The Cambodian grandmother who killed three family members before turning the gun on herself a week ago wore the eerie expression of a "smiley face" as she stalked relatives through their West Seattle home, her daughter recalls.
Thyda Luellen Phan, who was shot twice but survived, said that her 60-year-old mother could barely walk, but during the deadly rampage, "was running so quick nobody can stop her."
The only explanation the family could give for the killings was that Saroueun Sok was possessed.
"It wasn't her. I can tell from her face. It wasn't her," said Phan, 42.
Phan and about two dozen family members gathered at Khemarak Pothiram Buddhist Temple in Seattle's South Park neighborhood Tuesday evening for a prayer vigil. They have prayed daily since last Thursday's shootings and will continue until the funeral and cremation of the three victims and Sok on Saturday, family members said.
Three members of Phan's family — her husband Choeun Harm, 43, and two daughters, Jennifer Harm, 17, and Molina Phan, 14 — were killed. The three died of multiple gunshot wounds, according to the King County Medical Examiner's Office.
Sok died from a single gunshot wound to the head, the Medical Examiner's Office said.
Two of Phan's other children managed to escape from the home after Phan's mother opened fire.
Tuesday outside the temple, Phan, still in pain from the two gunshot wounds, recalled her mother's struggle with mental illness, the family's history in Cambodia and the day of the shootings.
She said her mother rarely spoke of her experiences in her native Cambodia, but Phan said that two of Sok's children died there, likely of starvation under the deadly Khmer Rouge regime. Sok's parents were also killed and she fled with her husband and surviving daughter.
The family spent almost five years in a Thai refugee camp and another year in the Philippines before being relocated to Philadelphia, where Phan met her husband and had their first child.
Phan and Harm separated for four years and she said she had three sons with a new husband in Seattle. But that marriage failed and her second husband won custody of the boys. Phan said her mother's mental illness began after Phan lost custody of her children.
"When my ex took the kids, she lost her memory. She sit and cry," she said.
Phan and Harm reunited and had five children together, she said.
Phan said her mother enjoyed the children, often spending time with them before bed, watching television and laughing as they sang to a karaoke machine.
Sok never got mad at her, she said.
A year ago, Sok was hospitalized for a month with symptoms of schizophrenia and depression, her daughter said. In the previous weeks, Sok told family members she could not tolerate colors, that she only wanted to see white. She began wearing all white, Phan said.
In the Buddhist religion, white is associated with purity. It is also the color family members wear to a funeral, she said.
When she was released from the hospital Sok's health seemed restored. "She went back to color," Phan said. Her mother and father moved in with the extended family.
At the end of August, the extended family was forced to move from their home in White Center to the three-bedroom home in West Seattle. Eleven members of the family lived on three floors. Phan said that her mother became upset that some of her possessions had been lost in the move. She thought the television was talking directly to her thoughts. She said that nobody liked her, that someone would try to kill her.
On the afternoon of the shooting, Phan, who worked the night shift at a nearby bowling alley and casino, had just awoken and showered. Her husband, Choeun, and her son, Kevin, 16, returned home from mowing lawns and were planning to go fishing.
Sok, dressed completely in white, came downstairs with a check for her son-in-law to take to the bank. Choeun teased his mother-in-law, Phan said, saying she should give the money to him. Then he turned to tie his shoes.
Sok pulled a handgun from her jacket pocket and shot him in the head.
Phan said she thought some fireworks had gone off. But Kevin then began screaming that his father was shot.
Phan ran to her mother and tried to grab the gun. Sok shot her through the shoulder, then took aim at Kevin and two younger sisters on the living-room couch, but missed. She tried to load another clip. When the gun jammed, Sok ran upstairs to retrieve another handgun.
A cousin said that before she opened fire, Sok told her to stay in an upstairs bedroom. The grandmother, speaking as though talking about a stranger, said, "someone has come to kill my daughter and kill her kids."
Downstairs, Phan and her older daughter, Jennifer, crowded around Choeun. Phan was on the phone to 911 when her mother returned and shot her and Jennifer. Sok was smiling, as if "she was playing a game," Phan said.
"She not even care. She [was] not even there. It was not her face at all."
Sok stalked the children into the basement. Several escaped through a window, but Sok circled the house and shot through a window, hitting Molina where she stood over Jennifer, who had collapsed on the floor.
At the hospital, Phan said she asked family members: "Where is Daddy? Where are Jennifer and Molina? Are they here at the hospital, too?" Until, finally, a social worker told her they had all been killed. She left the hospital after only a day, and family members have been dressing her wounds.
On Tuesday, at the temple, family members stroked Phan's arm and held her as she knelt at an altar on which incense and candles burned before photos of her mother, daughters and husband.
A family friend, Sean Phuong, said the family prayed and chanted for forgiveness for Sok, and for the release of the others' spirits from their bodies so they could be reborn into new lives. He said that in the Buddhist cycles of birth and death, someone who kills cannot be reborn as a human. But Phan said the others could return, perhaps even to their own family in the form of a new grandchild or nephew or niece.
"I hope they come back," she said.
Lynn Thompson: 206-464-8305 or lthompson@seattletimes.com
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