Content area
Full text
The lawyer for a Westlake Village man charged with a fatal shooting at a Persian New Year party indicated Thursday that his client was angry about an insult to his wife, was "attacked" when he returned to the gathering and might have accidentally discharged his gun during the struggle.
Dmitry Gorin, who represents murder suspect Steven Ronald Honma, 54, said his client was "scarred" by "tremendous" discrimination during a childhood as one of only a few Japanese-Americans in the San Fernando Valley at the time. Gorin said that history compounded Honma's anger when someone at the party allegedly used a slur against his wife, Chris Honma.
Honma's wife told Gorin that her husband told her that someone at the party had called her a "Christian white whore" and Honma was very upset, the attorney said. Gorin said he has no idea who may have spoken the alleged insult.
"I think it led to tragic consequences," said Gorin, of the Van Nuys-based law firm Kestenbaum, Eisner & Gorin. "Based...