On Friday, a rare joint release from two California counties confirmed that 31-year-old Myung Jin Kim was arrested in Laos and extradited back to California earlier this week to face prosecution in Santa Clara and Orange County in relation to two unsolved fatal shootings from the past decade.

As the Mercury News reports, Kim is now in a South Bay jail after an international manhunt led to his arrest in connection with the shooting deaths of Justin Tran in San Jose in 2016 and Christopher Kim (no relation) in Orange County in 2018. Tran was killed while driving in San Jose in what SJPD officials now believe was a murder-for-hire plot gone wrong, leaving Kim dead as a victim of mistaken identity.

Authorities subsequently grew to suspect Myung Jin Kim was responsible for orchestrating the failed hit.

Orange County police and prosecutors further allege that Kim also killed his friend Christopher Kim as the result of an argument over money in a drugstore parking lot in Westminster. The Mercury News reports that Myung Jin Kim was out on bail for drug-dealing charges when he allegedly shot his friend in front of the victim's girlfriend, prompting an arrest warrant to be issued weeks later.

The investigation into Tran's death progressed to the point where, in 2020, the SJPD issued their own arrest warrant for Kim yet he managed to elude arrest until a collaborative effort from police departments in San Jose, Westminster, and Anaheim — as well as multiple district attorneys' offices across the state — determined he was in Laos this past December.

The subsequent effort to capture Kim included participation from the FBI, U.S. Marshals Service, U.S. State Department, Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection. This effort also marked the first time Laos has transferred a fugitive to the United States.

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