Mass shooting left pregnant wife without a husband and young daughters without a father
Kalaxang Thao left a gathering of friends and family on Sunday night to take his pregnant wife and two young daughters home.
At their Fresno apartment, he made his wife Maikha Vang a pot of rice and filled bottles of milk for his 2- and 5-year-old.
Thao wanted to return to the barbecue – he didn’t want to hurt the feelings of his best friend, who invited him, said Thao’s brother-in-law John Vang, who also goes by Youa Nou Vang.
Maikha wanted him to stay home. But Thao, 40, did return to the house just south of Fresno Yosemite International Airport, and never came home.
Unknown gunmen entered the backyard of that house and opened fire on people watching a football game. The mass shooting killed Thao and three others, and wounded six more people.
“A bullet hit the top of his friend’s shoulder,” Vang said, “and struck him in the heart. … It’s a tragedy. I don’t know what to say. … The more I think about it, I’m emotional for myself, because he had two kids like I do.”
Maikha, who is seven months pregnant with the couple’s first son, doesn’t speak English and now doesn’t have any income, family said. She stayed at home with the children while her husband worked in an Asian grocery store. She and her daughters moved this week to Banning in Southern California to live with family there.
Two GoFundMe donation accounts were made by family to help them. The proceeds from one will go completely to Maikha and her children, Vang said. The other will be used to pay for the funeral, with anything remaining going to Maikha and her kids, another relative said.
Fresno leaders also announced the creation of another GoFundMe to help all the families of those killed in Sunday’s shooting.
Thao is remembered as a quiet, serious, hard-working man with many friends. He had an “open heart” and was known for helping anyone who needed it, Vang said.
He had a passion for soccer and played on a traveling Hmong soccer team. He worked at Thaj Yeeb Market in Fresno since 2013 and previously worked for a plastic window company in Banning.
Thao first came to the United States in 1996 when he was 17 years old, arriving in Fresno.
“Kalaxang was a very self-motivated, positive, and humble individual with a very strong work ethic,” a statement shared by Thaj Yeeb Market reads. “He always came to work with a smile and always lend a helping hand to whomever and wherever that is needed.”
Market owner Ker Cha – who refers to Thao as uncle – said Thao was also financially supporting his wife’s family in Laos. The couple met in that country.
“Since they got married,” Cha said, “he has been her backbone, and he has provided so much love for her. … She depended on him for everything. She doesn’t even know his bank account or anything about their lives. He took care of it.”
Cha said Thao’s wife and children will “need a lot of financial and emotional and psychological support.”
Thao’s children were “very very close to their dad.”
“It hurts them a lot,” Cha said. “Being so young, they don’t understand what’s going on. The baby cries and acts out until the mom stops. It’s affecting all of them.”
This story was originally published November 22, 2019 at 3:01 PM.
