SANTA ANA The body of 17-year-old Aubreyanna Sade Parks was found by cyclists on a grassy curb in an upscale neighborhood of Yorba Linda just before 5:30 a.m. on Feb. 4, 2014.
She had been stabbed multiple times.
Police found her dragonfly charm necklace, a bloody box-cutter knife, and a severed finger of hers at the scene.
Hours later, a Yorba Linda man walked into an emergency room in Corona with a severe cut on his hand and a story that raised suspicions with the doctor.
Trial began in Orange County Superior Court on Monday for Larry Shoo Shin, 38, who is accused of luring Parks to Yorba Linda and stabbing the teenager to death as she fought for her life.
In his opening statement, Senior Deputy District Attorney Troy Pino said Parks was working as a prostitute when Shin lured her to a wealthy neighborhood where he did not live and pretended to be a rich man seeking company while his wife was out of a town.
When she arrived around 4 a.m. Shin stabbed her and left her body sprawled on the curb, Pino said. The prosecutor said Parks had more than 30 cuts and defensive wounds and had tried to fight back using her box cutter.
Shin suffered a severe gash to his hand in the bloody confrontation, Pino said. He tried to stop the bleeding at home but realized the cut was too deep and went to the Corona hospital, even though there was a hospital just five miles from his home in Yorba Linda, Pino said.
Pino said Shin told the doctor that he “fell on his knife,” but his story was suspicious so the doctor called police.
Police searched Shin’s Prius parked at the hospital and found a knife under the seat that had blood from both Shin and the victim, Pino said. In the Prius, police also found Parks’ cell phone with text messages from Shin shortly before the killing asking her to meet him outside, he said.
Pino said Parks sometimes used an alias, Keisha Clark.
In a possible motive, Pino said, Parks and Shin had dated about seven months prior to the killing, and Shin, whose family owned several ATM machines, had accused her of stealing $5,000 to $20,000 from him while he was loading one of the ATMs.
He had lured her to that neighborbood by pretending to be someone else, Pino said.
Shin at the time had called police and told them that his girlfriend, Keisha Clark, had stolen money from him, Pino said.
Pino said Parks’ mother, about a year ago, searched through her daughter’s belongings and found a fake ID with her daughter’s picture and the name Keisha Clark.
“She was not an angel, she had her issues like we all do – I’m asking you to hold (Shin) accountable for what he did,” Pino told the jury.
Shin’s defense attorney, Edward Welbourn, waived his option of giving an opening statement on Monday.
A former cheerleader at Peary Middle School in Gardena, Parks was a good student and aspiring attorney before she met a man that coerced her into prostitution, her family has said.
Santa Ana police had arrested Parks in a prostitution sting a month before her death, and her pimp, Marsalis Joseph Smith, also was caught in the crackdown.
Parks told officers she feared Smith would hurt her or her family if she didn’t do as he said. She was taken to a shelter but left days later.
Smith, who was in custody when Parks was killed, pleaded guilty in 2014 to human trafficking and making criminal threats. He was sentenced to five years in prison.
