Drug addict kills Lankan store clerk

Walter Jayawardhana, in Los Angeles

USA: A drug addict and a criminal parolee out from a California state prison under the influence of drugs killed a Sri Lankan convenience stores clerk of a mini-market on night duty in a Los Angeles suburb.

The murder in San Fernando Valley, became headline news in all television stations here. Rohan Rambukwella, 41, was an employee of the AM PM Mini-market, a nationwide chain of convenience stores and was killed on the spot when Frank Katz hit him on the head with a baseball bat.

The murderer then climbed a roof of Denny's Restaurant opposite the stores and remained there until he was arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department. Katz was in a rage since he could not find money to drink and started smashing furniture in his father's house with a base ball bat on October 12, police said.

When his father, Frank Katz Senior called police, the son got out of the house saying he would commit suicide by making the police shoot him.

He entered the AM PM Mini-market, where Rambukwella was employed and without any reason hit him on the head with the baseball bat, according to his own admission.

Rambukwella, who did not have anybody of his family living in the Los Angeles area was found dead in a pool of blood when police found him later. He has been employed by the market chain for five years.

Police on his father's call found him on a roof of the nearby restaurant in Chatsworth, San Fernando Valley. Later, he admitted to the police that he killed the man and showed the bloodied base ball bat which he threw in to a nearby alley, after committing the crime.

Frank Katz Sr. who appeared before television cameras, said he expressed his regret for his son's act. He said his son who was a convicted felon was addicted to the drug methamphetamine and was once jailed for the attempted murder of another convenience store clerk and was paroled earlier than his jail term was over.

He said the State of California should take the responsibility since he was released before he was rehabilitated for his alcohol and drug addiction, to the world.