On their final night alive, Kevin and Joni Park checked into a bluff-top bungalow at one of the West Coast's toniest resorts packing a gun and a bag of ammunition. The Mission Viejo couple used a fake name, police said, and paid for their $2,200-a-night lodgings in cash. They brought piles of money and boxes of mysterious documents.
They had come to Laguna Beach's Montage Resort & Spa on Saturday night to discuss a vexing "business" problem, the couple's daughter said cryptically in an interview. But after a standoff with police the next morning, as other hotel guests readied themselves for oceanfront yoga and seaweed wraps, Kevin Park, 49, and Joni Park, 48, lay shot to death in what one investigator called "suicide by cop."
Much in the case remains baffling, such as details of the couple's problems, why they were armed and what their documents contained. Law enforcement also will not say why, the night before checking into the Montage, the Parks, who owned a real estate investment firm, summoned Orange County sheriff's deputies to their home and spoke to them for an hour.
The confrontation unfolded Sunday morning at the 30-acre resort, whose website boasts of 400-thread linens, Swedish massage and "Vichy shower rain therapy," and where bungalows can run up to $6,500 a night.
Laguna Beach police say they arrived at the Montage after receiving calls of a domestic disturbance, including one reporting "a crazy naked woman with a gun." Police said Joni Park was threatening to kill bystanders.
Police arrived to find themselves in a standoff with the Parks, talking to the couple through an open sliding-glass door. Joni Park waved the gun wildly, pointing it at police even after they ordered her to drop it, an investigator said. Officers shot her and she dropped the gun, the investigator said, at which point her husband picked it up and aimed at police, who shot him also.
The wounded wife then grabbed the gun and again aimed at police, the investigator said, forcing them to fire on her a second time.
Police searched local and federal databases to determine whether the Parks were suspects in any criminal investigations but found no evidence that they were. The investigator said Joni Park checked into the hotel first with about $7,000 in cash, and was joined later by her family.
