January 20th, 2008
KRIS SHERMAN; kris.sherman@thenewstribune.com
The News Tribune (Tacoma, Washington, USA)
Tears flow easily, and dreams remain unfulfilled in the East Side Tacoma home of Ry Sou and Rorth Kok.
Sometimes, when she can no longer tolerate the soul-deep ache, Sou walks up the stairs to her son’s bedroom, sits on his sleigh bed, and talks to him.
She thinks about opening the closet but does not.
The memories of her son, Samnang Kok, are too strong there, she says. They lie in the look and feel and smell of the clothing he wore as a student at Foss High School. They hide in his shoes. They lurk in his belongings.
Samnang Kok, a 17-year-old junior, was shot and killed a year ago in a school hallway, minutes before classes were to resume following winter break. He died there, next to a bank of lockers, on Jan. 3, 2007.
He was shot three times with a 9 mm handgun.
Douglas S. Chanthabouly, then an 18-year-old junior, is charged with first-degree murder in Sam Kok’s death. He has pleaded not guilty and remains in Pierce County Jail awaiting trial.
Sou and Kok miss their son every day, their grief perhaps scabbed over a bit but still raw.
“It’s hard,” Sou says, balancing her 3-year-old grandson, Makhai – Sam’s son – on her lap. She speaks in halting English, thick with the accent of her native Cambodia, but her pain needs no translation.
“He say every day, ‘Is Daddy gone?’” Sou says, retrieving the small, pink plastic clock her grandson pushed off the table in play. “‘Daddy go heaven, now,’ he say. ‘I hate someone kill my daddy.’”
Makhai lives with his mother, Tiari Johnson, but frequently spends time with his grandparents.
The family hasn’t filed a claim against the Tacoma School District, and Sam Kok’s parents don’t seem interested in one.
They’re more concerned, they say, with the welfare of their grandson and of their daughter, Lisa, a freshman at Lincoln High School. The couple also has two grown sons.
Sou, a cashier at the Emerald Queen Casino, says she’s talked to administrators at Lincoln about the need to keep her daughter safe.
“I want all the students to be good,” she adds. “I don’t want trouble.”
Sou was pregnant with Sam when she emigrated to the United States. She gave him a name that means good luck.
“I come from Cambodia, and I find freedom,” she says, pausing to pluck a napkin from the table and use it to blot tears. Kok does the same, wadding the napkin up and wiping it across his lined face.
“I take care of my son,” Sou continues. “I go to work. My son go to school. … When I am old, I plan my son take care of me.”
“He’s a good son,” Kok says quietly, his small frame quaking with the effort. “He help a lot. He good kid. He really smart.”
The couple expected Sam to watch his own boy grow to manhood, too.
When Sam wasn’t studying or helping his parents around the house, he watched cartoons with Makhai or played simple games with his son, an exuberant, small moving object.
“He like a small car,” Sou says, pointing at her grandson. “Zoom, zoom, zoom. … He look like his daddy,” she adds, pointing to Makhai’s dark, shining eyes.
It is those same eyes, in the larger Sam version, that peer at the world from above a teenage smirk in the life-size photo that hangs on the wall in the bedroom that was Sam’s. Below it rests a mini shrine – candles; an ornate cross; a vase of pink, orange and yellow flowers; incense; a pack of cigarettes and a lighter awaiting their owner.
“I look at the pictures. I cry,” Sou says. “I talk. I say, ‘Why? Why? My son go to school. Why my son die?’”
Kris Sherman: 253-597-8659
Sometimes, when she can no longer tolerate the soul-deep ache, Sou walks up the stairs to her son’s bedroom, sits on his sleigh bed, and talks to him.
She thinks about opening the closet but does not.
The memories of her son, Samnang Kok, are too strong there, she says. They lie in the look and feel and smell of the clothing he wore as a student at Foss High School. They hide in his shoes. They lurk in his belongings.
Samnang Kok, a 17-year-old junior, was shot and killed a year ago in a school hallway, minutes before classes were to resume following winter break. He died there, next to a bank of lockers, on Jan. 3, 2007.
He was shot three times with a 9 mm handgun.
Douglas S. Chanthabouly, then an 18-year-old junior, is charged with first-degree murder in Sam Kok’s death. He has pleaded not guilty and remains in Pierce County Jail awaiting trial.
Sou and Kok miss their son every day, their grief perhaps scabbed over a bit but still raw.
“It’s hard,” Sou says, balancing her 3-year-old grandson, Makhai – Sam’s son – on her lap. She speaks in halting English, thick with the accent of her native Cambodia, but her pain needs no translation.
“He say every day, ‘Is Daddy gone?’” Sou says, retrieving the small, pink plastic clock her grandson pushed off the table in play. “‘Daddy go heaven, now,’ he say. ‘I hate someone kill my daddy.’”
Makhai lives with his mother, Tiari Johnson, but frequently spends time with his grandparents.
The family hasn’t filed a claim against the Tacoma School District, and Sam Kok’s parents don’t seem interested in one.
They’re more concerned, they say, with the welfare of their grandson and of their daughter, Lisa, a freshman at Lincoln High School. The couple also has two grown sons.
Sou, a cashier at the Emerald Queen Casino, says she’s talked to administrators at Lincoln about the need to keep her daughter safe.
“I want all the students to be good,” she adds. “I don’t want trouble.”
Sou was pregnant with Sam when she emigrated to the United States. She gave him a name that means good luck.
“I come from Cambodia, and I find freedom,” she says, pausing to pluck a napkin from the table and use it to blot tears. Kok does the same, wadding the napkin up and wiping it across his lined face.
“I take care of my son,” Sou continues. “I go to work. My son go to school. … When I am old, I plan my son take care of me.”
“He’s a good son,” Kok says quietly, his small frame quaking with the effort. “He help a lot. He good kid. He really smart.”
The couple expected Sam to watch his own boy grow to manhood, too.
When Sam wasn’t studying or helping his parents around the house, he watched cartoons with Makhai or played simple games with his son, an exuberant, small moving object.
“He like a small car,” Sou says, pointing at her grandson. “Zoom, zoom, zoom. … He look like his daddy,” she adds, pointing to Makhai’s dark, shining eyes.
It is those same eyes, in the larger Sam version, that peer at the world from above a teenage smirk in the life-size photo that hangs on the wall in the bedroom that was Sam’s. Below it rests a mini shrine – candles; an ornate cross; a vase of pink, orange and yellow flowers; incense; a pack of cigarettes and a lighter awaiting their owner.
“I look at the pictures. I cry,” Sou says. “I talk. I say, ‘Why? Why? My son go to school. Why my son die?’”
Kris Sherman: 253-597-8659
5 comments:
This story is really sad, it nearly make me cry...
I wish every Cambodian in the United States to be safe and good luck!!!
I feel sorry if this was a mistaken killing! but if not this guy looks likes he's involved in some bad things..you just don't get shot 3 times for no reason!
He use to involve himself with bad people but eversince he had his son he was determined to finish school and give his son everything. It wasn't a mistakin killing it was premeditated by some khmer crip. He got shot in the face and then two more times in the chest. It was a senseless killing, there are a lot of khmer crips over here in Tacoma that are Happy he's dead, but why? They dont even know him very well. Sam wasn't even a gang banger, didn't test people or nothing, he had his own agenda for life, and he was determined to come up and get out of that environment.
RIP Samnang
A war can destroy roads, bridges, and other properties, esp life. These destruction can be rebuilt but human's mentality take much longer to rerase bad memory and some times can't be repaired and even can be plunged into chaos.
Some khmers, their thought process and behaviors, esp having very low to stresshold tolerance level, now are very susceptible to temper tandrum. Frequently they resort to revenge and take destructive means to their own hands. In Cambodia, teenagers get shot just by accidently step on another teenager's foot. Adult get stab or even kill from simple verbal argument. Wife is beaten because she can't service husband sooner, the list goes on and on....
The previous and current leaders of Cambodia also were/are easily falling into resorting violent means to solve their dispute. The war has been effecting all of us to the extend of beyond the repairable to some cases. Such tragic has been profoundly resonating throughout our society, fiercely engulf in manupiluting hypocrite of those leaders' state of mind. " One man stands alone to rule and conquer"
From angry raging thoughts to cruelty with no guilty along the line of to hide the shadow of real multifaces of sober affects, prompted all of us to pretend ourselves are ther product of KARMA. In fact it was marginally so as one covertedly abstracts to their hallow imagination.
There is no clear solution but everynone can say punish the bad one and/or perhapds we are eagerly looking for someone to blame to relieve our frustration and sorrow. There is nothing wrong with these acts. And to what extend and what do we gain from these endeavours of long journey of bitterness of soul search? Nevertheless, this is the price we have to pay when we had chosen this path and will continue to pay if we are going to do the same thing again.
Can't believe it's 2022 and I still remember this... hope all is well with the victims child and family.
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