Let’s start with an easy one. I like yogurt. A lot of people do. It’s a fun little snack that doesn’t kill you as quickly as other fun little snacks. I’ve even been to a yogurt shop and seen a cute girl behind the counter. So far I have everything in common with the guy I’m about to mention. However, at no point in my life did I ever knock the counter girl out, strip her naked and stuff her in a box.
Hopefully you haven’t either. Yet, according to the LA Times, that’s what this freak did.
A Monterey Park yogurt shop owner is facing kidnapping and attempted murder charges for abducting a female employee and keeping her inside a box in a soundproof room, prosecutors said Friday.
Robert Yachen Lee alleged lured the employee to a storage room above O My Yogurt on south Atlantic Boulevard early Wednesday, knocked her unconscious and then — after removing her clothing and dressing her in an adult diaper — placed her in a box, authorities said.
The victim told authorities that when she came to, she was bound with tape and had a collar around her neck.
Prosecutors believe Lee planned the kidnapping, because the storage room had recently been soundproofed.
The woman was able to free herself and escape to a nearby optometrist’s office, where she alerted police.
Lee appeared briefly in Alhambra Superior Court on Friday afternoon. Bail was set at $10 million.
Yeah, a cardboard box may not have been the best call in a situation like this. But, for the sake of the young lady, I’m glad this guy was a moron. Things could have gone much worse.
For example, this guy just outside Detroit found his drug buddy dead in his living room, or so he claims, so he cut her up into tiny pieces and stored her neatly around his house.
The 52-year-old man suspected in the death of a 32-year-old Gibraltar woman confessed to dismembering his neighbor’s body, but said he did not kill her, Police Chief Raymond Canterbury said Friday.
Police confronted the suspect Wednesday after he was seen on video surveillance buying cleaning supplies at a nearby supermarket, according to a source close to the investigation.
Canterbury said the suspect confessed as soon as police confronted him at a local business.
“We don’t know how she died, still,” Canterbury said. “He’s saying that they were doing drugs and she was just dead … in a chair.”
Canterbury said the man admitted to police that he cut up Pam Prpich’s body, and directed officers to her torso stored in his bedroom closet. Prpich had been missing since Aug. 12.
“We had 10 detectives or so and none of them would have said, ‘Yeah, this is where she was killed,’ ” he said of how clean the closet was kept. “You would have looked in that closet and shut the door and said, ‘She’s not in here.’ ”
The suspect’s 53-year-old brother said he believes his brother may have panicked. He said his brother is an ex-con who was adamant about not returning to prison.
“I think he was desperate,” the suspect’s brother said.
The suspect remained in jail Friday, with a warrant pending with the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office.
Now, with most of her daughter’s remains found, Cheryl Prpich said she can prepare to say good-bye.
She said the funeral is planned for Sept. 10 at the Uht Funeral Home in Westland.
Pam Prpich’s brother Michael Prpich was the first to discover the remains of his sister.
He was searching the creek behind the family’s Gibraltar home in the Bella Vista condominiums Aug. 18 when canoeists pointed out a suitcase. The body parts were found inside.
“When we get the autopsy and toxicology report, we’ll know what happened,” Cheryl Prpich said Friday. “It was a great relief to me that they had somebody in custody and were able to locate some of her remains.”
Cheryl Prpich said the suspect was the last number called from her daughter’s cell phone, according to call logs. She said she doesn’t know whether to believe the man’s assertions that her daughter died while doing drugs.
But “we’re not discounting it as possible,” she said.
Kids, if you’re playing along at home today, here’s a tip for you; another neat way to avoid going to jail is to simply call 911 and tell them there’s been an accident and your friend is dead. No one will be happy about it but you won’t be trying to raise bail from a bunch of guys selling $10 baggies.
Still, as bad as this was it was nothing compared to the love triangle nightmare that unfolded in Okanogo, Washington.
An Okanogan woman shot and killed a woman with whom she had a romantic relationship, then later died, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, investigators say.
A third woman shot during the Thursday evening incident in the north-central Washington town is listed in satisfactory condition today at a Spokane hospital.
The Okanogan County Sheriff’s Office said Shelly L. Payton, 42, shot and killed Rene J. Menard, 49, at the home they shared at 522 N. Second Ave. in Okanogan.
Payton and Menard had a tenuous romantic relationship that had ended some time ago, neighbors told The Omak-Okanogan County Chronicle. Earlier in the day Menard told Payton she wanted to move out, neighbors told the newspaper.
Payton arrived at the house around 5 p.m. and confronted Menard, who was there with Catrina M. Fling, 39, a Riverside, Wash., resident and friend of the couple.
Payton and Menard argued inside the house, then Payton walked out, went to her vehicle and grabbed a 40-caliber semi-automatic pistol, and came back inside, Sheriff Frank T. Rogers said today.
When Fling began to dial 911, Payton shot her in the lower abdomen, and Fling collapsed on the floor, Rogers said. The injured woman still was able to reach 911 dispatchers to report what was happening, he said.
It appears a struggle broke out between Payton and Menard when another shot was fired from Payton, Rogers said. The scene indicates Menard was holding on to Payton from behind and a single shot went through both women, he said.
Menard died at the scene and Payton later died at Mid-Valley Hospital in Omak, the sheriff said.
Neighbors said Payton has a teenage son who was at football practice at the time of the shooting.
Fling was airlifted to Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane, where the hospital this morning said she’s in satisfactory condition.
Detectives also are investigating a report from the McDonald’s in Omak that around 2 p.m. Thursday, Payton walked into the restaurant, pulled out a pistol, stuck it in the chest of a woman eating with her children, and pulled the trigger. The weapon was not loaded, according to witnesses, who said Payton stated the next time there would be bullets in the gun.
Law enforcement was not called at the time of that incident but were notified later, after restaurant managers heard about the shooting, the sheriff said.
Detectives are pulling security tapes from the McDonald’s and are looking for the woman involved to interview her.
Payton, who had a military background, and Fling both worked at Walmart, neighbors said. Menard was the manager at Caso’s grocery store and provided karaoke entertainment in the area.
Mike Kostic, manager of The Cariboo Inn, where Menard spun karaoke records, told the Chronicle, “I came back here and told them to shut the bar down,” he said. “We closed down early because nobody really wanted to work.”
The Cariboo turned into a makeshift memorial Thursday night as friends and family gathered to reflect on the day’s events.
“She was the nicest person I ever met,” Kostic said of Menard. “She just had a big heart. It’s really a shame. We were in shock. Nobody here really expected it.”
You know, this is the first karaoke related murder I’ve ever written about. I sincerely hope it’s the last. Sadly, the whole WalMart part is getting cliched.
Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!