1 Slain, 5 Jailed in Robbery Try at Rosemead Home

A home-invasion robbery in Rosemead sparked two gunfights between robbers and sheriff’s deputies that left one suspect dead and five others in jail, officials said Tuesday.

It was another in a rising number of such crimes in the San Gabriel Valley, many of them involving Asian gangs, according to Sheriff’s Detective Mike O’Rourke.

Six men raided the home of Quitong Lei on Kelburn Avene about 8:30 p.m. Monday, demanding money and jewelry, Sheriff’s Sgt. Noel Lanier said. It was not clear whether they were members of a gang.

Deputies, who came to the home in response to a robbery report, arrested a man sitting in a parked car outside the home. Then they saw three other men burst from a side door of the house and begin running down the street, Lanier said. The three were arrested by other deputies after a brief exchange of gunfire in which no one was hit.

Meanwhile, two other men had taken the Lei family--including children ages 11, 4 and 1--and a family friend hostage. That began a three-hour standoff with deputies and a sheriff’s SWAT team.

The deadlock was broken about midnight when two deputies at the rear of the Lei home heard noises from the home next door and found one of the men crouched on the back porch behind a washing machine, Lanier said.

The deputies ordered him to drop his weapon and surrender, but the man cursed and pointed his 9-millimeter pistol at them, authorities said. The officers opened fire and hit him several times in the upper torso. The man, an Asian-American who was not immediately identified, died soon after at Garfield Medical Center in Monterey Park.

After the shooting, the SWAT team rushed the house and found the last of the six men unarmed and trying to hide, Lanier said. He was taken into custody and the Lei family and a friend, Shao Hua Wang, were released unharmed.

“Everybody is all right,” Wang, 25, said in an interview Tuesday. She said the robbers gathered up the Leis’ cash, gold chains and rings while they held them hostage. The family could not identify the thieves because they wore masks, she said.

The five surviving suspects--Thanh Ly, 19, of El Monte; Tung Dien Do, 29, of Orange; Cuong Tu Hong, 23, of Alhambra; Phong Tan Huynh, 18, of Alhambra, and Kiet Thai, 30, of Los Angeles--were being held without bail in County Jail and face a variety of charges from murder to weapons violations.

“This has never happened before, and our family has lived in this house for generations,” said the Lei family’s next-door neighbor, Lawrence Vallejos, a 29-year-old electrician, as he bleached bloodstains from the porch floor near his bullet-riddled washing machine.