Min Yang can recount to the second the police shooting that ended his son’s life in his family’s living room.
He can walk the staircase leading to his family’s Koreatown apartment, where he stood with a social worker, and recite from memory the brief sequence of questions they asked his son two years earlier.
He remembers how Yong Yang, in the throes of a mental health crisis, granted his father permission to enter but declined the clinician. Min Yang can recall his 40-year-old son speaking to people no one else could see or hear as he and the social worker, Soo Tae Yoon, retreated down the stairwell.
Yoon made a quick call to the police, as Min Yang remembers growing more concerned. Officers opened the door to their home and, in just a few chaotic seconds captured on body camera, fatally shot Yong Yang on May 2, 2024.
The parents remember how, when they were allowed to reenter the apartment, the wood-paneled floor where their son had died was spotless.
While Yong Yang was gone, Min Yang said a scratch in the family’s dinner table was the only mark that remained from the day of the shooting.
The Yang family, including Yong’s twin brother Yin, continue calling for reforms aimed at preventing similar shootings. They recently filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles, and its police department, in addition to the one they’d filed in state court soon after his death. They have joined a loose group of people whose relatives were fatally shot by police to push for new policies on how officers respond to mental health calls. And they continue to challenge the Korean American community to confront taboos around mental illness and demand for effective mental health services.
“I called for help, thinking they’d take him to the hospital, but that’s not what happened,” Min Yang said during one of several interviews at his home with The LA Local. “Now, this work, it’s my life.”
The Yang family’s efforts are rooted in the living room of the Gramercy Place apartment where they’ve lived for the last decade and where Yong Yang took his final breath.
“We decided not to move until there’s some closure,” Min Yang said. “Maybe, subconsciously, I’m affected because I live here. But I’m driven to see this through.”
From Korea to Los Angeles
Min Yang’s teenage years in Korea were filled with American pop music and movies, reflecting the nation’s growing exposure to U.S. culture in the years following the Korean War.
It was 1984, and Los Angeles had just hosted the Olympics when Yang immigrated to attend a graduate program in chemical engineering at the University of Southern California.
Myung Sook Yang followed soon after with their twin boys, who were just a few months old.
“I couldn’t even take a drink of water on the flight,” Myung Sook Yang said. “I was so busy taking care of them.”
At the time, South Korea was going through rapid industrial growth, though it still struggled with poverty and political unrest. For Min Yang, LA seemed like a promised land teeming with people from around the world enjoying the freedoms secured by the Civil Rights Movement.
“There were so many different kinds of people, and LA had the largest population of Koreans outside of Korea,” Min Yang said.
He got his green card after he completed his program and started an education business for immigrants. For years, he wrote a column and gave talks about education in Korean American media, meanwhile moving between Glendale, La Cañada Flintridge and Koreatown. Over decades, the family built an American life they were proud of.
It wasn’t until Yong Yang was about 20 years old that his parents started to understand that he was struggling with an illness. He had bouts of severe depression and eventually spoke of experiencing auditory hallucinations.
They committed themselves to treating their son, helping him as he tried different medications to see which was most effective. And they encouraged him to pursue what gave him joy. They have kept recordings their son made while studying music at a local school, videos of him singing at church and a recording of a Mother’s Day song.
As he got older, Yong Yang’s illness presented itself in patterns. He heard voices and grew paranoid for his safety. He preferred to stay home. He had trouble sleeping and would need to meditate for hours before being able to pursue everyday tasks.
“He suffered so much more than us,” Myung Sook Yang said. “The ill have been through a lot of agony and struggle.”
A call for help
Yong Yang rode his bike to his parent’s apartment on May 1, 2024, and eventually decided to stay the night. Min Yang remembers his son being unable to sleep and beginning to act erratically. It was something they had experienced before.
“I noticed that the questions I was asking him and what I was saying were making things worse,” Min Yang said. “We decided to leave the house to give him space and let him work through it.”
They spent most of the night in their car or at Min Yang’s office, getting breakfast and going to a park before returning home and finding Yong Yang still experiencing hallucinations. The family had weathered worse episodes with their son over the years. But, exhausted and confused, they decided to try something different.
Min Yang called the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health early on the morning of May 2, saying their son was experiencing a mental health crisis and needed to be taken to the hospital.
Not long after the county social worker arrived, they called the police saying Yong Yang had threatened them, which Min Yang disagreed with. Still, he said, he hoped the police might help his son get help.
“Yong voluntarily came to our house,” Min Yang said. “We let him stay. He needed help. Yong was afraid of them.”
When they arrived, Min Yang told the officers that Yong Yang was experiencing hallucinations, was alone in the home and that he needed to go to the hospital, according to a video released by the LAPD. Initially, two officers spoke with Yong Yang through the door but didn’t enter. They changed their plan after a sergeant arrived on the scene.
Police approached the door to the family’s apartment and called for Yong Yang, the bodycam video shows. When they opened the door, they found him holding a kitchen knife.
Min Yang remembers being told by police to ask a medical responder to bring a gurney to the apartment. He walked down the driveway leading to the street, and heard three or four shots fired rapidly. The LAPD said Officer Andres Lopez shot Yong Yang, who was pronounced dead in his family’s living room.
The family was taken to a local police station and questioned for roughly three hours about Yong Yang’s life. Numb and confused, the parents said, they answered the questions the best they could. They were let back into their apartment at about 8:30 p.m., after learning their son’s body had been removed earlier in the day. An LAPD community liaison later called Min Yang about receiving his son’s body, and there has been little communication since.
Min Yang has spoken publicly about how the loss of his son has transformed his understanding of policing and community.
“Before my son got killed, I was like every other Korean ahjussi, like your parents, I guess,” Min Yang said, with reference to a Korean term for a middle-aged man. He made the comments during a recent panel discussion, saying that he kept to himself, worked hard and generally believed his family would succeed: “Save a little money, have a good time, forget about anything happening in Koreatown.”
“We learned over time that this system has no care for the person,” Min Yang added. “When police decide to use weapons, they intend to kill. It’s the most inhumane government policy in the world.”
What they’re fighting for now
Two years after Yang was shot and killed, his family marked the anniversary outside the federal courthouse in downtown LA. The event began under a gray sky, matching the somber mood, before the sun broke through later in the morning. They were joined by other families who have lost loved ones in similar cases — many of whom are now working together to push for change.
The Yangs appeared composed during the press conference marking what they called the “angelversary” of Yong’s death, but at the more intimate vigil that followed, his mother sobbed during a moment of silence.
Supporters described how the case has brought together families from across California, including some who have spent years organizing around police shootings. Carrie Zhang, who lived on the same street where Yang died, said she learned what had happened after trying to figure out why her street had been shut down by police.
“I was really shaken by it because he’s my neighbor, and Asian American mental health is really important to me,” she said.
Zhang, who runs the nonprofit Asian Mental Health Project, which provides community-based mental health resources, later connected with Yang’s family and helped organize an earlier vigil at California Market in Koreatown. She said the case raised concerns she hears often in her work around mental health.
“There are so many barriers to receiving care,” she said. “One is, of course, stigma. And in situations like this, there’s a fear that it can become something else.”
Yin Yang, Yong’s twin, said that he had every intention of living the rest of his life with his brother.
“After he died, I’ve been battling depression,” he said. “Sometimes it’s hard to even get out of bed.”
He said his parents retired earlier than planned because they could not continue working.
“Same with me—except I’m too young to retire—but I couldn’t find the motivation to work,” he said.
Since his brother’s death, he has begun attending rallies and organizing events with other families.
“Before, I never went to events like this, but since he died, I’ve been trying to go to as many as I can,” he said. “Something needs to change, and hopefully we can make it happen.”
Several of those families grew closer through advocacy work in Sacramento.
Deanna Sullivan’s 19-year-old son David was killed by Buena Park police in 2019 after officers shot him four times when he attempted to flee after being pulled over while driving a stolen vehicle. He was unarmed.
Sullivan said she believes her son was was overwhelmed with grief after losing both his grandfather to cancer and his uncle to suicide.
After David was killed, Sullivan said the police “brought us in right away, got us talking while we were grieving and confused and then used what we said against us.”
She invited the Yang family to help support a bill in the state legislature aimed at protecting families after police shootings.
The bill, AB 572, was shaped in part by families’ experiences in the hours after their loved ones were killed, when they are often questioned by investigators while still in shock. Sullivan said Min Yang traveled to Sacramento multiple times to support the effort, speaking with lawmakers and sharing his family’s story.
The bill was signed into law last October.
Sharon Watkins was also present at Yang’s recent vigil. Her son, Phillip Watkins, was shot and killed by San Jose police in 2015 during a mental health crisis. He approached police while carrying a pocket knife and was shot when he was 50 feet away, Watkins said.
The loss continues to impact her family years later. For Watkins, advocacy, community and several years of therapy have helped her process her son’s killing.
“Change is not going to happen just because it’s the right thing to do,” Watkins said. “The people that are suffering have to fight for change.”
The Yang family says they are focused on ensuring Yong’s death leads to better policies and practices to protect people experiencing mental health crises. They spoke about that hope for accountability to the LA Board of Police Commissioners last year.
While the commissioners voted that the officer met the department’s criteria justifying deadly force, they also voted that the tactics preceding the shooting were not appropriate. The officer was not charged criminally.
The Yang family has filed two civil suits claiming their son was wrongfully killed and that the involved officers and the county social worker were negligent.
LAPD is fighting both cases and did not respond for comment.
Min Yang believes that the police did not consider his son’s life or the lives of his relatives when they arrived at his apartment and that a culture of downplaying liability has since prevented any progress in how the department approaches volatile mental health crises.
“In Korea, life just has a different value, there’s more respect for human dignity,” Min Yang said. “If a police officer does something wrong there, they are prosecuted. In America, officers rarely face charges. I can’t believe we live under the same sky.”
Myung Sook Yang also said Yong’s death is a reminder for all that vulnerable people are not receiving the support they need and the families trying to help them are left with few safe resources.
“Yong’s death can help the lives of people who are suffering, the lives of future Americans,” Myung Sook Yang said.
As they prepare for rallies, hearings, meetings, and interviews, they gather at the same table still marked by the aftermath of the shooting, the center of their home and their organizing.
