Thursday, June 14, 2012

Tragedy Strikes at Grace Deli

IMG_0942
I'm getting a a report from a resident that the owner of Grace Deli died this morning during the course of what I'm told (by the resident) may have been a botched robbery. Some items are missing from the establishment. The owner, whose first name was Jun June Lim (also referred to by WJLA as Hae Soon Lim), might have been in her late 50s was 65. She was planning to retire with her husband soon, and looked forward the birth of her first grandchild in October. It is not yet clear if she died of natural causes Mrs. Lim suffered a gunshot to the neck. I'm told there are currently multiple news cameras on the scene. Grace Deli is at the corner of 7th and H Street.

++++++++++++
UPDATE
++++++++++++

I can confirm that the case has been referred to the homicide unit.

 +++++++++++++
UPDATE
+++++++++++++

Apparently she was discovered when an employee showed up at work.

Full coverage:

NBC4
WUSA9
WAMU
Homicide Watch D.C.
WJLA (ABC 7)

From the WJLA article:
"Detectives are now checking to see whether or not there was a camera in or outside the store, which may have captured any images or video of a suspect. Police say that they don't know if someone followed her inside the store or if a suspect entered after she unlocked the gates."

Hopefully a security camera in the area caught some footage of the individual who shot Mrs. Lim in the neck inside her business. Please keep Mrs. Lim's family in your thoughts.

36 comments:

Jim Ed said...

I walked by this morning and saw Chief Lanier and a bunch of Homicide detectives, so it doesn't look good.

Myia said...

How sad...what a senseless and tragic loss.... I live very close to hear - so it hits close to home.

Anonymous said...

probably some vigilante gentrifiers

inked said...

11:18,
Perhaps we could refrain from making jokes about what appears to be a murder that occurred only hours ago? Thanks in advance.

Anonymous said...

Seriously Anon 11:18. What the hell are you thinking?

Anonymous said...

tragic, Ms. Lim was always very pleasant when I went to her store, she treated everyone with respect. to hear that she was going to retire soon and has a new grandchild makes it even more painful. RIP Ms. Lim

Anonymous said...

What a tragic loss; our thoughts should be with her and her family not on making asinine comments Anon 11:18. What a fucktard you are Ana 11:18 and yes that was mean to be ironic.

Dolemite said...

This is absolutely awful! My condolences to the family.

Anonymous said...

So very sad. What is it going to take for the police to protect residents and business owners in this area from vicious criminals who prey on them with impunity?

Rayful Edmond said...

My deepest sympathy to her friends and family. Tragic.

Anonymous said...

This is terrible, we can't push these animals into Maryland soon enough.

Anonymous said...

And you think that they won't/don't come in from Maryland to rob and kill you?

Anonymous said...

One of the local felon crack addicts just got out of jail 2 weeks ago, and lives a block north of here. The police should look up "cardale" on the 1000 block of 7th.

Anonymous said...

This is the 2nd asian owner murdered in the area in the past year (the other in the Florida Market). I feel Marion Barry has fueled the flames for anti-Asian businesses with his remarks. Obviously not directly responsible, but I am still mad at him.

Anonymous said...

She was an amazingly kind woman. How could anyone do this? She worked so hard and just wanted to retire.

Anonymous said...

Animals

poo said...

i wish someone in the JOURNALISM BUSINESS (which would exclude the washington post) would ask marion barry how he feels his deragotory comments about asians contributed, or not, to increased hostilities towards asians in the district - particularly in light of the recent uptick in homicides.

like that will ever happen.

but i'd nominate the person for a local pulitzer......

Arch_NME said...

Store owners should really be allowed to keep firearms on hand. The districts ridiculous laws obviously mean nothing to the people who murdered this woman. All we've done is create a society of defenseless victims. The police can't sit around and guard every store 24/7, that's not their job anyway. I do hope they do their job in this case and track down and prosecute those responsible though. What kind of fucking loser kills someone over a few hundred dollars anyway?

h streeter said...

Only someone who hates themselves immensely is able to manifest such anger towards a defenseless victim. RIP the lady.

stunned said...

dear lord in heaven.. rip sweet lady. your heart knew no bounds. cared for everyone. selflessness defined

HipsterExtraordinaire said...

pieces of utter garbage...who would do this? don't drop the soap in prison, gents

Anonymous said...

broad morning daylight while most of us still slept, needlessly the life of an innocent pillar of the community is snuffed out. the criminals' profits are not worth the life within, no way to swallow the preying on a peaceful soul who felt safe in this community. i'll be at the vigil tomorrow at 5. we must join hands to honor her spirit and make this a safer place. RIP June Lim, we do not deserve you, we will never forget you. Love to her husband, son, family, and spirit.

Trinidaddy said...

when and where is the vigil?

Anonymous said...

If you can, attend the vigil at noon today (outside the deli) to pay tribute to this wonderful woman and to demand justice and an end to the coddling of both criminals and hate-mongers like Councilman Barry.

Nate said...

I was like, "Should I read the comments? There are going to be some horrible ones..." But I wanted to see if anyone had more information or context.

It horrifies me to read the responses of people to the murder of one of our neighbors. Is there no vulgar flippancy, racist implication, or rape threat people would think too awful to post here?

poo said...

nate, we all feel bad. instead of mourning, can't we mourn AND search for some sort of responsible reaction from our "leaders?"

sorry. i multitask.

i mourn, and i search for justice.

sorry you can only do one at a time.

poo said...

this is a blog, not a mourning site.

this particular blog is a great venue for social justice, since it's read by so called journalists.

DO SOMETHING.

or just do nothing.

Alan Page said...

@poo

The person that killed this woman was not influenced by Barry to do so. To kill an innocent person in cold blood is an act of insanity. You can't blame Barry for that. The person who did this is clearly unhinged. Barry's comment can be criticized on its own merit without attempting to tie him in to a murder. You can't possibly believe that Barry would endorse this kind of behavior, be reasonable. There are many legitimate points of critique one could levy against Barry, saying that he advocates the killing of unarmed shopkeepers is NOT one of them. For shame.

Alan Page said...

Let me add that I hope her family finds some measure of peace and that the killer is captured soon. I saw news footage of community members consoling the son of the slain owner.

Despite attempts from commentators on this board to create the impression that Barry has made Washingtonians anti-Asian, a large contingent of black Washingtonians came out to comfort her son and many of them gave stirring testimony to the kindness of the slain owner to journalists on the scene. This is a gravely sad *human* loss and it goes beyond any attempts at racial divisiveness or pigeonholing.

poo said...

i still want a solution. where do you suggest we begin? and i'm not talking about the obvious targets like fixing education, sentences for minors, etc.

you know, all the things DC does right. (AHEM)

please share your ideas...

Alan Page said...

@poo

This may sound fatalist, but once someone gets to the point where they are willing to murder a stranger in cold blood, what exactly can a city do other than track the murderer down and imprison him or her? One might say that quicker social service interventions into domestic abuse situations or improving education might lessen the chance that any given child will grow up to be a murderer, but in a city of 600,000, assuring that everyone has the kind of childhood that zeroes out the possibility of them growing up to kill someone is almost impossible. The murder rate has dropped drastically from catastrophic levels in the late 80s and early 90s, but are you asking how the city reduces the murder rate to zero, Poo? I don't think anyone has that answer.

tiffanyc said...

i think I've reached the point where i can truly say i hate this blog.

i experienced this event through the radio, through seeing the scene, etc. and i saw a community come together. i saw the humanity of the people who are OFTEN maligned on this blog show their love and reverence for this woman. i had hoped that her killing would show all in this neighborhood that we can live, shop, love, lose and grieve as one.

but, no.

people with next to nothing talked about her generosity. people talked of going into that store since they were children. i had hoped that newer residents would see why former residents hold on to these places and the value they bring us. i wanted this event to show how these small stores on the corner are actually a huge part of what has made this neighborhood just that. and how strongly this killing has effected us.

but, no.

i have to, AGAIN, read about my people being called animals, calls to send us back to maryland, no sensible acknowledgement that this could happen anywhere to ANY shop owner and that it was unfortunately H street and (most unfortunately) to Mrs. Lim.

i'm all for free speech, but something has to be done about the tone on this blog.

le poo said...

oh, tiffany.

you're either really young, or really old.

maybe you should just go back to ohio, or indiana, or from wherever you hail.

the tone there is right up your alley.

Anonymous said...

grow up le poo

Anonymous said...

Tiffany, I couldn't agree more with you re: the general tone of comments on this blog. I do have a quibble with your claim that "your people" are being disparaged. Unless "your people" are murderers, or assholes out to mug or assault the residents an visitors of this neighborhood, I wouldn't take it personally. I would LOVE to rid our neighborhood of those kinds of people. I bet that most of the long term residents of H St. would agree with that as well.

Chris said...

tiffanyc --

First off, ignore "Poo." S/he's (don't know if male/female) been doing this "if I don't agree with you, I'm going to suggest you move to the midwest" thing for years. It's stupid, and nobody takes it seriously. Poo has been a troll here since moment #1, although to be fair it's gotten much better. Back in January of 2008 Poo made some unbelievably despicable suggestions about the origin (and intent!) of the fire that destroyed Jimmy's Tire; when the news reported on the cause a few days later, and when members of the family that owned the business appeared on here to chide him, he unsurprisingly disappeared. Compared to back then, this is a golden age for Poo's trolling; but you're still best off if you don't take those posts seriously.

Second, it sounds to me from your post like you don't so much hate this blog as you hate the comments in the blog, or at least so large a portion of them as to make reading the comments unpleasant. I'm not going to try to persuade you otherwise -- you're right, there's lots of awful comments here -- but I will say that (sadly) the level of discourse here is no worse than it is on most open/unmoderated fora on the net these days. It's basically been like this since the September that never ended, and it's almost certainly never going to change. You can say that it's bad here, and you're right; but I doubt you're going to find it much better anywhere else. The targets of nastiness may be different; but nastiness of some kind will be there.

So that being the case, IMHO, you have a few options. 1) You can give up completely on reading this blog. 2) You can stick around, but only read Inked's posts, skipping the comments entirely; I actually know a number of people who do that, for exactly this reason. 3) You can stick with it and read and comment, behaving like an adult and treating people decently even as you're surrounded by people acting like jerks. That takes some effort; but it's worth doing, and it has its own rewards. 4) Or you could hang around and lash back at people and give them what their behavior seems to deserve. But it won't change anything for the better, and it'll make you a more sour person in the end.

Just some thoughts. Peace.