Latasha Harlins

A videotape played Monday in a Los Angeles courtroom showed that Latasha Harlins had turned away from a scuffle with a Korean grocer when the black teen-ager was shot in the back of the head. "This is not television. This is not the movies. This is real life," Deputy District Attorney Roxane Carvajal had warned the jury. "You will see Latasha being killed. She will die in front of your eyes."

In 1997, Dominick Dunne wrote a book whose title has stuck with me, although not for the reasons Dunne intended when he crafted his gossipy novel about the O.J. Simpson case. His title, "Another City, Not My Own," summed up how I had felt in 1992 when my own Los Angeles was suddenly a stranger to me. To live in Los Angeles during the riots was like waking up and seeing your own room through a distorting lens. You recognized the place, but something didn't look right. That was La Brea Boulevard on TV, all right - but the shop windows were shattered.

The family of a 15-year-old black girl slain by a Korean grocer will receive about $300,000 in settlement of a multimillion-dollar lawsuit, an attorney said. Soon Ja Du's insurance company agreed to pay "a little over $300,000" to the brother and sister of Latasha Harlins, said Charles Lloyd, Du's attorney. Harlins was shot and killed by Du during a confrontation in March, 1991, over whether the youth had paid for a bottle of orange juice in a store owned by the Du family.

Black teenager Latasha Harlins' slaying by a Korean-born grocer greatly inflamed racial tensions in Los Angeles and, along with the Rodney G. King verdicts, helped fuel the rioting that convulsed the city in 1992. It also catapulted into prominence Patricia Moore. The otherwise little-known Compton councilwoman led a recall campaign against the Superior Court judge who sentenced Harlins' killer to probation instead of a jail term.

The state Supreme Court, ending a divisive, racially charged legal battle, on Thursday let stand Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Joyce A. Karlin's decision granting probation to a Korean-born grocer in the videotaped fatal shooting of a black teen-ager. In a brief order, the court refused to review an appellate ruling upholding the sentence issued by Karlin in November. The justices turned down an appeal by Los Angeles Dist. Atty.

When Denise Harlins thinks back to the point when her life veered onto a course she never imagined, she remembers sitting in a Los Angeles courtroom at a bail hearing for Soon Ja Du. The Korean-born grocer had shot to death Harlins' 15-year-old niece, Latasha, on March 16, 1991, in South Los Angeles, in a dispute over a bottle of orange juice. At the hearing, Harlins sat with her family and a few friends as Du pleaded not guilty to murder.

A little south and a bit east of where the fury of last week spent itself, the store where Latasha Harlins died still stands. That it is still there is not for want of trying. Four times on the night of April 29, when chances of getting a firefighter were nil, someone tried to torch the Empire Liquor Market Deli. Four times, with buckets and garbage cans full of water, black men, women and children blotted the fires out.

The shooting of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins in a South-Central Los Angeles market was, indeed, tragic. But can someone explain just why she put the orange juice in her knapsack before paying for it? CHRISTY M. HAYS Canoga Park

Nearly one year after a Korean-born grocer was sentenced to five years probation for the killing of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins, a small group of family members and friends demonstrated outside the Federal Building in Westwood on Friday. "We will never let people forget the death of this child, until justice is achieved," said Gina Rae, leader of the Justice for Latasha Harlins Committee.

For the last few months many of us in Los Angeles have been following the tragic story of the death of Latasha Harlins. Your coverage has been thorough, but your frequent referrals to both Latasha Harlins' and Soon Ja Du's race seems to me to exacerbate the misunderstanding and distrust not only between the African-American and Korean communities, but among us all. A terrible thing happened in March. A young woman's life was snuffed out. A family had a child, a sister, a cousin violently extracted from its midst.

Just seven people showed up to memorialize Latasha Harlins this week, a quiet, somber group whose members lit incense, carried candles and posted placards in front of the home of the woman who killed her. The brief gathering on a placid suburban street in the San Fernando Valley was a striking contrast to the boisterous protests that used to attract hundreds of people and packs of reporters and camera crews.

Regarding "Crossing the Culture Line" (by Lydia Chavez, Aug. 28): Activists Karen Bass and Bong Hwan Kim are among the best and the brightest in a new alliance of community coalition builders. I am pleased that they are finally receiving the recognition they so richly deserve. Louis Caldera Assembly Member, 46th District Los Angeles It's very telling that when Chavez mentions four Korean-American merchants who were murdered in 1986, she doesn't mention their names.

When Latasha Harlins was killed in a dispute over a bottle of orange juice at the Empire Liquor Market on March 16, 1991, the convenience store became the focal point for community protest and news coverage. But two years later, much of the attention has waned and the market, closed since the 15-year-old Harlins was shot by grocer Soon Ja Du, is a dumping ground. Area residents say it has deteriorated into an eyesore that attracts drug dealers, prostitutes and vagrants.

When Denise Harlins thinks back to the point when her life veered onto a course she never imagined, she remembers sitting in a Los Angeles courtroom at a bail hearing for Soon Ja Du. The Korean-born grocer had shot to death Harlins' 15-year-old niece, Latasha, on March 16, 1991, in South Los Angeles, in a dispute over a bottle of orange juice. At the hearing, Harlins sat with her family and a few friends as Du pleaded not guilty to murder.

Nearly one year after a Korean-born grocer was sentenced to five years probation for the killing of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins, a small group of family members and friends demonstrated outside the Federal Building in Westwood on Friday. "We will never let people forget the death of this child, until justice is achieved," said Gina Rae, leader of the Justice for Latasha Harlins Committee.

The younger siblings of Latasha Harlins, the teen-ager who was fatally shot last year by grocer Soon Ja Du, will split a $300,000 court settlement from Du's insurance company, but the children's father will receive nothing, a judge ruled Tuesday. The ruling closes another chapter in a case that heightened tensions among Korean-born merchants and their customers in South Los Angeles last year and which, many believe, contributed to the recent riots.

I must express my great disappointment in the reelection of Judge Karlin. My disappointment and anger extend to my people in the black community who did not take the time and effort to vote to ensure this unqualified individual did not continue to hand down decisions that are unfair and unjust. I ask what does it take for this community to get motivated? As a new resident of Los Angeles County, I watched in horror and disbelief when Judge Karlin sentenced the Korean grocer to five years' probation for the killing of Latasha Harlins.

Regarding "Crossing the Culture Line" (by Lydia Chavez, Aug. 28): Activists Karen Bass and Bong Hwan Kim are among the best and the brightest in a new alliance of community coalition builders. I am pleased that they are finally receiving the recognition they so richly deserve. Louis Caldera Assembly Member, 46th District Los Angeles It's very telling that when Chavez mentions four Korean-American merchants who were murdered in 1986, she doesn't mention their names.

The state Supreme Court, ending a divisive, racially charged legal battle, on Thursday let stand Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Joyce A. Karlin's decision granting probation to a Korean-born grocer in the videotaped fatal shooting of a black teen-ager. In a brief order, the court refused to review an appellate ruling upholding the sentence issued by Karlin in November. The justices turned down an appeal by Los Angeles Dist. Atty.

The family of a 15-year-old black girl slain by a Korean grocer will receive about $300,000 in settlement of a multimillion-dollar lawsuit, an attorney said. Soon Ja Du's insurance company agreed to pay "a little over $300,000" to the brother and sister of Latasha Harlins, said Charles Lloyd, Du's attorney. Harlins was shot and killed by Du during a confrontation in March, 1991, over whether the youth had paid for a bottle of orange juice in a store owned by the Du family.