Latasha Harlins

Case background and investigation

Latasha Harlins was a 15-year-old girl who was shot and killed on March 16, 1991, at Empire Liquor Market, a store at West 91st Street and South Figueroa Street in South Los Angeles. She was born on January 1, 1976. The shooting happened 13 days after the police beating of Rodney King and was recorded by the store's security camera.

According to the accounts reviewed, Harlins went into the store and picked up a bottle of orange juice priced at under two dollars. Soon Ja Du, who ran the store with her family, accused her of trying to steal it. Wikipedia's summary of the security footage says Harlins had money in her hand. Du took hold of the girl, and a physical struggle followed in which Harlins struck Du. Harlins put the juice on the counter and turned to go. Du then took a revolver from behind the counter and fired once, hitting Harlins in the back of the head. A review in the Los Angeles Review of Books notes that police found her holding two dollar bills.

Du was charged with murder. In 1991 a Los Angeles jury found her guilty of the lesser offense of voluntary manslaughter, which carried a maximum of 16 years in prison. In November 1991 Superior Court Judge Joyce Karlin suspended a ten-year prison term and placed Du on five years of probation, with 400 hours of community service, a $500 fine and an order to pay the Harlins family's funeral costs. Du served no prison time after sentencing.

The sentence was strongly criticized, including by the Los Angeles County District Attorney and by Black community leaders, according to Wikipedia's entry on Karlin. A state appeals court upheld the sentence on April 21, 1992. An effort to recall the judge in 1992 narrowly failed.

About a week after the appellate ruling, the acquittal of police officers in the Rodney King case was followed by several days of rioting in Los Angeles. Historians, including UCLA's Brenda Stevenson, who wrote a book on the case, regard the Harlins sentence as one of the events that set the stage for the unrest. Many Korean-owned businesses were damaged. Du's store was looted and burned and did not reopen.

In July 1992 a civil claim was settled for $300,000, paid to Harlins's estate for the benefit of her siblings, according to Wikipedia. Los Angeles has since recognized April 29 as Latasha Harlins Day, and in 2021 a mural honoring her was dedicated at the Algin Sutton Recreation Center.