A 39-year-old man was sentenced Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the stabbing murder of a teenage prostitute, who had ripped him off for about $20,000, in front of an upscale Yorba Linda home.
Larry Soo Shin was convicted June 1 of first-degree murder with special circumstances of lying in wait.
Pretending to be someone else, Shin had arranged to have the 17-year-old victim — Aubreyanna Sade Parks — stay with him for a week for $3,000 beginning on Feb. 4, 2014, said Senior Deputy District Attorney Troy Pino.
The meeting point was Mirkwood Run and Live Oak Lane, although Shin lived about a mile and a ha1f away with his mother at the time, Pino said.
Shin lied to Parks that his “wife” was out of town and that he needed to “sneak” her into the house through the garage, the prosecutor said.
The last text exchange between the two was shortly before 5 a.m., according to Pino, who said a bicyclist called 911 about 5:40 a.m. to report seeing the victim’s body.
Seven months before the killing, Shin “dated” Keisha Clark, an alias for Parks, for a couple of weeks until the Gardena resident “betrayed” him by stealing about $20,000 from him while he was doing his job replenishing ATMs, Pino said.
Parks was listed as a runaway at the time of her death and had been picked up by vice officers in January 2014, according to Santa Ana police. She was placed in a shelter in Huntington Beach, but ran away.
The teen suffered 38 stab wounds, many of them defensive wounds as she struggled against her attacker, Pino said. She lost her pinkie finger in the struggle, he said, and left blood on a wrought-iron fence as she tried to get away from her killer.
The victim had a box cutter on her, but she never had a chance to use it to defend herself, Pino said.
Shin sustained a cut on his hand that was so serious he drove to a hospital in Corona to have it treated, bypassing a medical center five minutes from his home, the prosecutor said.
A doctor, doubting Shin’s claim that he fell and cut his hand, called police, Pino said.
Police searched Shin’s Prius in the hospital parking lot and found the victim’s cell phone, with the battery removed, and the murder weapon, Pino said. The cell phone battery had been in Shin’s pocket, he said.
Blood on the victim’s ankle was found to match the defendant’s, and the murder weapon contained blood from the defendant and victim, Pino said.
Shin’s attorney, Ed Welbourn, said his client did arrange to meet with Parks on that morning, but when he arrived was “tackled” from behind by Parks’ pimp, R.J. Crew. Shin was robbed in the tussle, and when he recovered, he saw Parks’ body and took her phone and the knife, according to the defense attorney.
Shin testified that he thought someone else killed Parks.
— City News Service