Chinese takeout delivery driver Yong Sun was a familiar figure in eastern Henrico County.
"Twenty minutes tops. And the food was always great," said Fontae Smith, 23, who ordered what became Yong Sun's final delivery Easter night. "I handed him the money, he handed me the food, we shook hands and that was it."
Seconds later, the 36-year-old Yong Sun was near death, shot through the driver's-side window, slumped over a cardboard delivery box in the passenger seat of a for-sale Saturn station wagon.
The Great Wall Chinese Restaurant worker died making good on delivering a $10.89 order: two shrimp rolls and a quart of shrimp fried rice.
"For my girlfriend," Smith said. "It got here right on time. I gave him two fives and four quarters."
Police are not sure the money was taken in what they are describing as an attempted robbery that ended in a homicide.
Yong Sun's death has rocked the once-peaceful community in the 500 block of Lowell Street, "a place where kids have always learned to succeed," said a longtime resident who gave his name as R. Williams. "Kids from here went to college, and if the family couldn't afford it, we all pitched in."
The street runs off Pleasant Street between Nine Mile Road and Oakley's Lane south of Highland Springs.
Kelli Spencer, who lives next door to Smith, said she saw the apparent gunman run past her.
"I heard two thuds and then two gunshots," she said. "Like someone pounded on the window of the car and then boom, boom, like two gunshots."
Spencer was standing on outdoor basement steps, smoking.
"He ran right up the driveway. We looked at each other and froze. I think I scared him as much as he scared me," she said.
A man, perhaps 18, ran off through the backyard, jumped a 5-foot fence and was gone, she said. He was well-groomed and wore dark clothing, including a black coat with gold or silver markings.
"I didn't see a gun," Spencer said.
She called police about the same time Smith did -- shortly after 9 p.m. -- and the two met on Smith's lawn, peering through the dark into the Saturn as Yong Sun's life passed.
"He was in my car," said a man at the Great Wall Chinese Restaurant on Nine Mile Road. "His wife and child still in China . . .
"Sorrow mean nothing," the man, who identified himself only as David, said of the emptiness of the tragedy. He said he was too busy to comment further.
A man at a neighboring business, Jim Donithan, said Yong Sun had an insatiable curiosity and would visit often to ask the meaning of English words he came across in the newspaper.
"He was a good, good person," Donithan said.
No arrests had been made as of last night.
Spencer worries about changes in her neighborhood, a place where "you can hear the birds and squirrels."
Just a few blocks away, though, her great-nephew, Quintin "Skittles" Chambers, was gunned down in December, she said. And in February, dozens of shots from what sounded like automatic-weapon fire took the life of a man from Louisa County.
"Now I just stay in the house. I don't come out in the daytime," she said.
The Great Wall Chinese Restaurant opened for business as usual yesterday at 11 a.m.
A notice, in broken English, to employees, provided by David, suggests it is a rigorous workplace.
"Since this is a small business, we cannot offer such benefit such as following," the notice reads.
The last item reads this way: "No offer of any health or accident insurance; we don't response for any accidental hurt due to working."
Contact Bill McKelway at (804) 649-6601 or bmckelway@timesdispatch.com.
Recent delivery-driver slayings in Virginia
April 25, 2008: Robert Edward Kiesewetter, 50, of Portsmouth was shot in Portsmouth while making a delivery for Papa John's.July 6 : Yong Hui Zhang, 24, of Fredericksburg was abducted July 3 in Fredericksburg while making deliveries for his parents' restaurant, China Express. His body was found in Sussex County three days later. He died of a stab wound to the chest.
Sunday: Yong Sun, 36, was shot to death shortly after he delivered an order for the Great Wall restaurant, 6023 Nine Mile Road, to a home in the 500 block of Lowell Street in Henrico County.
SOURCE: Times-Dispatch archives
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