Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Coffee, Tea, or You Annoy Me



Shadow Yang: ‘He was alone’
By Eric Litke
Sheboygan Press staff

A Hmong man who took his own life on Monday after shooting and killing a former coworker lived a reclusive and quiet existence, devoid of friends and family and cut off from the local Hmong community, neighbors and acquaintances said Tuesday.
I love how being quiet and minding your own business is of note in today's world.

Shadow Yang, 40, who lived alone in the rundown upper flat of a Kentucky Avenue duplex, forced his way into the Rockline Industries plant about 4:30 a.m. and killed 28-year-old Christina Wollenzien, police say. Wearing a camouflage jacket and armed himself with a semiautomatic handgun and 100 rounds of ammunition, Yang shot Wollenzien three times before retreating to another part of the Maryland Avenue plant to kill himself.
Another account mentioned Yang worked in the 'coffee filter division' there. I'm imagining a guy in Urban Camo with a white pith helmet, and instead of the iconic 'shrubbery' stuck all over him; the white coffee filters are glued all over his helmet and shoulders to help him blend in as he stalks his prey...

Somsy Kingpadith, Yang’s downstairs neighbor for the last two years, said the shooting “surprised me and it kind of didn’t.”
Your point being? The only positive here is he killed himself.

“Just the way he carried himself, he seemed like a person that would go to an extreme if he had to do something,” said Kingpadith, 29, who lives at 707 Kentucky Ave., with her husband and four children. “He never really smiled, never talked … kind of creepy in a way.”
What of the name Shadow? Was he dark in mood as a little boy? Change his name as an adult? Interesting.

Kingpadith said she saw Yang only a few times over the last two years, and never once talked to him. She never saw anyone else come or go from his apartment.“It just seemed like there was no one living there,” Kingpadith said.
I'd check around for some other missing people who aren't "living" there...

Vue Yang, a leader in the Sheboygan Hmong community, said Shadow Yang moved to Sheboygan from Detroit about 2001, when he started work at Rockline. He had no family here, and his parents live in Detroit. Vue Yang said he hadn’t seen Shadow Yang since he first came to the community.“He is part of the Yang clan, but he didn’t want to mix with anybody … he never attended any function or social activity, he just stayed by himself,” Vue Yang said. “That’s very unusual. Most of the time when there’s a summer festival or somebody died, or some New Year’s thing, people show up, but for some reason he didn’t come.”
Man, I'm a regular ticking time bomb myself!

But while Shadow Yang kept to himself, he also kept out of trouble, police and Rockline officials said. Sheboygan police had no contact with him outside of a 2001 citation for unsafe parking, and Rockline officials said he had a “very good record” in his five years working as a forklift operator.
His aim with those pointy forks was really good...

He stopped coming to work without explanation in October 2006, and had been unemployed since, said Lt. Jeff Johnston of the Sheboygan Police Department.
He had some blogging to catch up on...

Kingpadith said she wished her neighbor had reached out to someone before taking the drastic steps he did.“I wish he would talk to somebody or at least ask for some kind of help that he had to go and do this,” she said. “He was alone.”
So he could have taken more people with him?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Does your "Conspiracy Antennae" come up AT ALL???? Why are we all in training to be paranoid? From the old TV commercials about our "pantylines", to the constant barrage about our "yellow smile", our entire society is crazy!

I live alone because I am not hooked up with another half, and the house is too small to rent out a room; Not too many people visit me because the house is too small -- I go out to be sociable..... I rather enjoy my evenings alone -- I can watch my own TV shows, or not, play on my computer, read, walk the dog.... Holy cow -- that really could be construed as suspect, couldn't it? I'd hate to think what my few neighbors would actually say if something happened.... my comings and goings, and the things I do when I spend time at home -- WEIRD!!!!