Jury hears closing arguments in Modesto restaurant slaying

A prosecutor on Monday told a jury that Wing Ming Chan, owner of Modesto’s China Gourmet restaurant, was bludgeoned to death with a meat cleaver during a robbery. It was an attack, he said, not self-defense as the defendant claims.

“He’s the one who took a deadly weapon to the confrontation,” Deputy District Attorney Randy Fischer said.

Zhi Jian Mei, 33, is charged with murder and robbery in the death of Chan, 47, of Modesto. The deadly confrontation occurred sometime after 9 p.m. on May 4, 2011, at Chan’s restaurant in Century Center at Oakdale Road and Orangeburg Avenue.

Mark Sullivan, Mei’s defense attorney, argued that the prosecution’s theory of robbery is flawed and doesn’t make any sense. He said the prosecution is asking the jury to guess and speculate what happened inside the restaurant.

“If you have to guess what happened at the China Gourmet, then the prosecution hasn’t proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt,” Sullivan told the jurors.

Mei had been an employee at the China Gourmet for three years. The defendant says he waited until after the restaurant closed that night to tell his boss that he was leaving his job as a cook at the restaurant. He said Chan responded to his news with anger, name-calling and shoving.

Mei claims that Chan had a small knife and cut his right shoulder before the restaurant owner chased the cook into the kitchen, where Mei grabbed the meat cleaver. The defendant told police that he was wielding the meat cleaver as he chased Chan toward the back of the restaurant down a narrow hallway, then he and his boss wrestled over the meat cleaver.

Fischer argued that there was no reason for Mei to chase Chan if the defendant was truly afraid of his boss. The prosecutor said Mei’s car was parked out front; he could have left the restaurant without escalating the violence. “The victim ran away from Mr. Mei,” he told the jury.

Sullivan argued that the law does not require a defendant to retreat, and it allows for a defendant to pursue an assailant until the threat of danger is no longer present. The defense attorney told the jury that Mei was fighting off Chan, after the restaurant owner cut the defendant and tried to strangle him.

“He’s trying to keep himself alive,” Sullivan said.

Stanislaus County Forensic Pathologist Sung-Ook Baik testified during the trial that he found 80 “chops” alone on Chan’s face and head. Chan suffered 141 cuts on his body. Baik said that he found that the normal appearance of Chan’s face and head had been “completely destroyed.”

There were some chops found on Chan’s scalp; deep cuts that damaged bone. Fischer argued that slashes from the meat cleaver were found on Chan’s lower back and 18 chops on the back of his neck, which show the attack continued as Chan crawled away.

Fischer told the jurors that Mei’s own words to police show the attack on Chan was not in self-defense. “I hit him until I was exhausted, and then I couldn’t hit him anymore,” Mei told the detectives during a four-hour police interrogation.

The prosecution says Mei killed Chan in the process of stealing his boss’s wallet. Mei owed Chan $800 and $1,500 to a co-worker. Police questioned Mei about his gambling habit; he went to gamble at a card game before returning to the restaurant to speak with Chan. Mei said he would gamble to support his family.

Mei told police he never saw Chan's wallet. Investigators found the wallet inside Mei’s car parked at a police facility the day after Chan’s death. Investigators found nearly $1,600 in cash in Chan’s pants pockets and another $261 in a cookie tin underneath the restaurant’s front counter.

Sullivan asked the jury why would Mei take Chan’s wallet and not take all the cash he had in his pockets or the cash in the cookie tin? “That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever ... there was no robbery,” he argued.

The prosecutor said Chan’s wallet was thick, and Mei grabbed what was easily visible. Fischer said the defendant wouldn’t have known his boss had the other cash in his other pockets or the cookie tin.

The defense attorney said no blood was found on the wallet or any of its contents, including $217 in cash. But there was blood found throughout the car’s interior and Mei’s clothing. Sullivan told the jury his client never grabbed Chan’s wallet, and police failed to fully investigate Mei’s roommate, who had access to the defendant’s car that day and had only worked at the restaurant for about a month.

Stanislaus Superior Court Judge Nancy Ashley on Wednesday morning will give the jurors their instructions before they begin deliberations.

This story was originally published March 21, 2016 at 6:50 PM with the headline "Jury hears closing arguments in Modesto restaurant slaying."