Police: Woman killed at Ontario hotel was a call girl
The three Pomona men arrested this month for the December shooting death of a 41-year-old woman at a boutique hotel allegedly conspired to rob the woman because they believed she kept large sums of cash in her hotel room.
Kimberly Michelle Sum, a mother of two, was discovered dead in her room Dec. 20 at the Hotel Indigo in Ontario. She had been shot once in the upper chest.
According to multiple people interviewed by police, including Sum's teenage daughter, Sum was a drug addict and a prostitute.
Sum used cash to pay for her room at the Hotel Indigo, located northwest of the 10 Freeway and Haven Avenue, where she had been living since late July 2008, a hotel staff member told Ontario police investigators, according to police reports.
One of the men arrested for Sum's murder -- 29-year-old Larry Darnell Shyne -- was at one time Sum's pimp, according to several people interviewed by police.
Shyne conceived and help to organize the robbery, according to police reports.
Shyne allegedly enlisted the help of two people for the robbery -- his cousin, 21-year-old Donald Ray Walker, and Matthew James McClane, 27. Both men were on parole at the time.
Shyne was arrested March 14, and Walker and McClane were arrested March 12. All three have pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and robbery, and each remain in custody at West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga in lieu of $1.5 million bail.
After Walker was arrested, he granted an interview with detectives and confessed to participating in the robbery, which he said ended unexpectedly in Sum's death.
Walker, who was released from prison Nov. 26, told police that Shyne contacted him and suggested they rob a woman he knew -- Sum -- who kept large amounts of cash in her bedroom because of her occupation as a call girl.
"(Shyne) was hoping to get some money, and scare the victim so she would come back to him," according to the police account of Walker's interview.
Shyne instructed Walker and McClane to arrange a meeting with Sum through Craig's List, a classified-listings Web site where Sum advertised her services, Walker told police.
At about 11 p.m. on Dec. 19, Shyne dropped off McClane and Walker at the hotel, and the two men proceeded to Sum's room, each putting on gloves before they arrived, hotel surveillance footage shows, according to the police report.
According to Walker, Sum opened the door for the two men into wearing a white bathrobe.
McClane asked Sum several times where "the money" was, and hit her. "She kept saying, 'What money?'" Walker told police.
Walker said Sum's voice got louder and louder during the course of the encounter, and McClane took out a chrome pistol and shot her.
"Walker looked up and said he wanted to keep it real, and he said he asked McClane why he shot her," the police report states. "McClane told him it was an accident."
Walker repeatedly insisted the two men did not go to Sum's room intending to kill her.
"I admit I was at the motel -- I admit it," Walker told police, according to the report. "I didn't do the shooting!"
Walker told police he and McClane did not find any money or jewelry in Sum's room.
About three weeks after Sum's killing, Ontario police publicly released images of the two alleged robbers captured by the Hotel Indigo's surveillance system.
After the images were released, police received multiple anonymous tips that Walker was one of the men pictured. The informants said Walker bragged of the robbery and murder.
Walker, McClane and Shyne are next due in West Valley Superior Court on April 9.
When Sum first arrived at the Hotel Indigo, she was living at the hotel with her new husband, Essie Bell, and was known to hotel staff as Kimberly Bell, hotel staff members told police.
Bell, who was also allegedly Sum's pimp, was arrested and imprisoned in August 2008 for violating parole, according to the police report.
After Bell was imprisoned at the California Institute for Men in Chino, Shyne began pimping Sum, one of Sum's former roommates told police.
Shyne allegedly knew Sum because Sum was friends with Shyne's girlfriend, Jerica Mangham, a prostitute who went by the nickname "Diamond."
Click here for past stories on Sum's killing.
OMG!!! THATS KIM I KNO HER I HAVE BEEN LOOKIN FOR HER FOR ABOUT A YEAR DAMN THATS FUCKED UP. MY PRAYS GO OUT TO THE FAMILY AND TO HER DAUGHTER IM SO SORRY I KNO YOUR MOM LOVE U N YOUR BROTHER PLEASE BE STRONG HONEY I KNO IT'S HARD BUT THINGS WILL GET BETTER.... OH 2 HER DAUGHTER AGAIN I HOPE ONE DAY WE CAN TALK AGAIN IF NOT HOLD YA HEAD HIGH..... KISHA....
larry and donald are my boys.. damn. larry was a real dude but donald is an actor, he plays the part of a "g" but when the pressure is on he folds.. ha! but he doesnt deserve this....
this situation is sad but the media sure can turn a storie upside down and that sad and very unsafe for donald
Innocent Until proven Guilty! I understand that what these three men have intended or done was wrong! And My heart goes out to the family of the woman that was killed! But who are we to judge anyone or to automatically start pointing fingers at anyone! We don't know the entire truth about this story only what the police are allowing the public to know or what they think! Right now they are going by what one man said, who could be making all of this up to clear his own name to keep his ownself outta spending the rest of his life in prison! Until then I dont think anyone has any right to point the fingers at anyone or to pass any judgement on any of these men! In the long run the only man besides these 3 men who knows the truth Is God himself! So let him be the one to judge I'm sure the one or two or even three that were involved will be punished If Guilty!