But listen to the Senator’s comments……if he hand’t have acted, everyone would have been dead.
Friends say robbery victim was outspoken crack shot

by Karl Fischer and Scott Marshall
Knight Ridder Newspapers
ALAMO, Calif. – Friends of the man killed in a gun battle with two men who invaded his home remembered him yesterday as a family man, a devoted Harley-Davidson rider – and someone who never went anywhere without a handgun.

“He had a funny vest,” said Sean Duffy of the way Dr. Kim Fang concealed the weapon he always carried. “If one gave him a hug, one would know what was in the vest.”

Fang, 48, died late Tuesday from the gunshot wounds he suffered in the shootout, which also left one of the suspects dead and the other badly injured. Fang’s wife, Dr. Winnie Fang, was shot in the chest and is in good condition.

“Kim died defending what we all believe in – his family and his home,” said Duffy, president of the Martinez Gun Club.

Fang’s decision to battle the intruders was true to his character, said state Sen. Richard Rainey, who has known the family for about 20 years.

“He’s that kind of person,” said Rainey, former sheriff of Contra Costa County. “He would never just not have reacted. If he hadn’t have reacted, probably everyone in the house would have been dead.”

Investigators scrambled yesterday to retrace the steps of two young parolees suspected of planning – and then botching – the home-invasion robbery.

Investigators did not know why the suspects – identified as Mesa Kasem, 22, and Soknoeum Nem, 21, both of Stockton – descended on the Fangs in a secluded, million-dollar house in Alamo. The suspects had Fang’s name and address written on a scrap of paper in a rented car found a block from Fang’s house.

Nem and Kasem apparently acted alone, said Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Capt. George Lawrence.

The masked gunmen knocked on the front door at 5:55 p.m. Tuesday. When Winnie Fang answered, they pushed her inside and put a gun to her head, and a struggle began. Her brother, Richard Law, 49, joined the fight, and the invaders forced him to the floor.

Investigators believe the invaders either didn’t realize Law was there or mistakenly believed that he was Kim Fang.

At some point, the family’s nanny, Melee Jung, was pistol-whipped on the back of her head.

Kim Fang apparently heard the noise, grabbed a .38-caliber revolver and ran down the stairs, possibly surprising the invaders. He fired five shots at the men, Lawrence said, hitting Kasem in the leg, chest and head, killing him.

Family members eventually disarmed Nem, who also was wounded in the melee, struck him several times on the head with a frying pan, bound him with telephone or electrical cord and held him until deputies arrived minutes later.

Nem remains hospitalized. The nanny was treated at a hospital and released.

Kim Fang, a longtime member of the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Posse, a fund-raising organization for the department, owned several guns and had a reputation for flamboyance, with a fondness for leather clothes, flashy jewelry and Harley-Davidsons.

“I always thought something was going to happen to him,” said Mike McGuire, owner of McGuire’s Harley-Davidson & Buell in Walnut Creek, where Fang would visit two to three times a month. “Everyone knew he packed a gun.”

Fang, a former dentist and plastic surgeon, once worked in the plastic-surgery section and the trauma service at John Muir Medical Center. He retired from hospital work in 1994.

The hospital issued a statement yesterday calling him “a surgeon with endless energy, great surgical talent and a compassionate approach to all he cared for.”

“He was outspoken,” said Dr. William Jervis, a Walnut Creek plastic surgeon. “You always knew where you were with him.”

Fang also was a crack shot and obtained a concealed-weapons permit in 1989 after he reported receiving threats on his life, said Lawrence, who declined to elaborate.