The Golden Dragon massacre: A bloody rampage in the heart of 1970s San Francisco. Interior of the Golden Dragon Restaurant, 1977. It started with a dispute over illegal firework sales and ended with a rampage in a San Francisco restaurant that in under 60 seconds left five innocent bystanders dead, and 11 injured.
Melvin Yu walked directly up to a man at a table and shot him nine times, continuing to fire after the victim had fallen to the floor. Yu then redirected his automatic rifle and shot randomly into the crowd, accompanied by two shotgun blasts from the other gunmen.
San Francisco Police, ambulance personnel and the coroner at the site of the shooting of Lo Chan, also known as March Chan and Michael Lee, September 11, 1977.
Denise Louie, an urban planning student at the University of Washington in Seattle, was shot and killed at the Golden Dragon restaurant in San Francisco's Chinatown on Sept. 4, 1977. Louie was in town visiting her friend, Paul Wada, who was also killed in the massacre.
It still bears the gold signage "Golden Dragon Dining" on its green tiled exterior. San Francisco was near-broken from the violence of the '70s, and pressure was put on the authorities to clean up the city. Shortly after the bloodshed the SFPD established the Chinatown Gang Task Force.
6 of 6 Tom Yu, in a 1978 photo, was the mastermind who plotted the massacre at the Golden Dragon. Show More Show Less
Retired city police Sgt. Daniel Foley, who helped solve the case, said Tam, by cooperating, was “the one person in that whole crowd that had a conscience.”
He was charged with five counts of first degree murder in the Sept. 4, 1977 killings. California Department of Correct Show More Show Less. 2 of 6 Melvin Yu, one of the gunmen in the massacre at Chinatown's Golden Dragon restaurant, was paroled in 2015 after serving 37 years in prison.
It may seem surprising that a person accused of a mass killing would ever be released. But the Golden Dragon shooters were just 17 when, while pursuing revenge for their Joe Boys gang, they slaughtered five bystanders and wounded 11 others in the crowded restaurant. Even if they committed the same crime today, their ages would make them ineligible for the death penalty.
The Imperial Palace was formerly the Golden Dragon Restaurant, where the Golden Dragon Massacre took place on Sept. 4, 1977 in Chinatown. Santiago Mejia/The Chronicle Show More Show Less
Tom Yu — no relation to Melvin Yu — had stayed back at a friend’s home in Pacifica during the killing, but he also was convicted of five counts of first-degree murder as the attack’s chief plotter. He was 18 at the time of the rampage. In June, a state board found him suitable for parole after nine rejections, and a final decision could reach the governor’s desk in mid-September, officials said.