From the L.A. Times (obtrusive registration required, use laexaminer/laexaminer):
Family tensions and serious illness may have led the 56-year-old operator of the Zankou Chicken chain to fatally shoot his mother and sister in an upscale Glendale home before turning the gun on himself, police, family and friends said Wednesday.
What a tragedy; sadly a mundane one these days, in which a person, despondent or enraged, kills those close to them and then kills themselves (please spare me please the emails that he did it with a gun
its been a knife, fire, a tall building and poison in other cases that made the paper recently). But it hit me hard because like a lot of other Angelinos, Zankou Chicken means a lot to me.
In 1981, my Parisian-born then-wife and I moved back to Los Angeles from Chicago. Id grown up here, hated it and fled the place at 16. Shed occasionally visited it with me and saw it, as only a well-bred Parisian can, as the emptiest most soulless place on earth.
Then one night, sometime in the next year, we went downtown to the then-thriving LA Theatre Center and saw their amazing production of Jacques and His Master, stopped at Zankou Chicken afterwards, and then went to Club 88 on Pico and saw X and Los Lobos in a room slightly larger than our living room at home.
Driving home at about 3, we looked at each other, laughed, and decided that living in L.A. might not be so bad after all. My sweetie and I met my brother in the Glendale store just a month ago, and it was as ambrosial as ever. So thank you, Iskenderian family, and please accept my very personal condolences.