Qualla: A Wooden Stick in Rohnert Park

A Wooden Stick in Rohnert Park: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit en:User:Paul.h, Public domain. Kuanchung Kao had been celebrating. On the night of April 28, 1997, he went out to the Cotati Yacht Club with friends to mark a new job. At the bar, another patron mistook him for Japanese. When Kao corrected him -- he was Chinese, born in Taiwan -- the man replied, "You all look alike to me." The bartender separated them. Hours later, Kao was dead in the street outside his own home in Rohnert Park, California, shot by a police officer who had been on the scene for less than a minute. He was holding a wooden stick the size of a closet rod. He left behind a wife, Ayling Wu, a registered nurse, and their three young children.

Image: en:User:Paul.h | Public domain

A Wooden Stick in Rohnert Park: Ninety Seconds on a Suburban Street

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit en:User:Paul.h, Public domain. What happened between 2:11 a.m. and 2:16 a.m. on April 29 unfolded with the terrible compression of most police shootings. Neighbors called 911 to report Kao waving a six-foot wooden stick in the street outside his driveway -- a drunken disturbance, nothing more. Officer Mike Lyn...

Image: en:User:Paul.h | Public domain

A Wooden Stick in Rohnert Park: Three Investigations, One Answer

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit en:User:Paul.h, Public domain. The Sonoma County Sheriff's Department compiled a 600-page report and delivered it to the District Attorney's office in May 1997. On June 19, District Attorney Michael Mullins declined to file charges, ruling that Shields had acted in self-defense. In August, Rohnert Park's own D...

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A Wooden Stick in Rohnert Park: The Hundred-Day Vigil

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit en:User:Paul.h, Public domain. The Asian American community refused to accept that conclusion. Within weeks of the shooting, civil rights attorney John Burris and the Asian Law Caucus filed a wrongful death claim on behalf of Wu and her children, followed in February 1998 by a federal lawsuit against Rohnert P...

Image: en:User:Paul.h | Public domain

A Wooden Stick in Rohnert Park: What Remained

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit en:User:Paul.h, Public domain. The settlement, meant to provide for a widow and three children, was largely consumed by legal fees and moving expenses. Ayling Wu relocated her family to Orange County by 1998, far from the house where her husband had been killed. All of Kao and Wu's extended family lived in Tai...

Image: en:User:Paul.h | Public domain