A South Bay family that lost a member to gun violence nearly 13 years ago mourned another loss Friday, remembering a Hermosa Beach woman shot to death in an apparent murder-suicide as vibrant, colorful and “everything that any good person would be like.”

Coroner’s officials on Saturday identified Vantha’s killer as Angel Marquez, 32, of Los Angeles. Family and friends said Marquez was an ex-boyfriend of several years who had been harassing Vantha and breaking into her home.

Homicide detectives said their bodies were found Thursday inside the apartment in the 100 block of Herondo Street shortly after a report of gunshots. A gun was located near the man’s body.

A hairstylist at Evolution Salon in Hermosa Beach, Vantha was the oldest of four siblings in a family of Cambodian refugees who fled the Khmer Rouge regime, which killed 1.7 million people in the 1970s. Vantha was born in a refugee camp in Thailand. The children and their parents eventually made their way to Long Beach and the South Bay.

Vantha, who attended Long Beach schools, had aspirations to become an actress and model, and was named Miss Cambodia America in 1998. She chose not to continue with a beauty pageant career and followed in her mother’s footsteps to become a hairdresser.
http://www.dailybreeze.com/general-news ... tive-woman

A 1999 cover of Entertainment This Week features Tho Vantha, left, alongside Cambodian actor Tep Rindaro.

Former Cambodian Beauty Queen Murdered in California
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/

she is hotter now than when she was miss cambodia, what gives?

Yeah, kind of weird. Looks you get too. Maybe it's that terrible 90s style, which was only surpassed by the 80s in terms of monstrosity.

Sad to hear about that. Hermosa Beach is a hell-hole.

she is hotter now than when she was miss cambodia, what gives?

She was. Probably just down to bad make-up and camera angles.