Toko Tasi, a Hawaiian-born and Long Beach-raised musician who wrote and sang in a reggae style and worked with Sublime and Slightly Stoopid, was gunned down outside a Long Beach bar late Saturday, according to authorities.
Long Beach police say some kind of dispute may have happened between the 45-year-old and an unknown man before Tasi was shot around 11:40 p.m. along Willow Street near Eucalyptus Avenue. The gunman was last seen fleeing the area on foot.
Cops and paramedics tried to save the victim, but he died at the scene.
The coroner’s office had not yet identified Tasi as the victim, pending notification of family, but friends identified him to the Long Beach Post, and tributes and remembrances are being posted on social media, including in the comments to this YouTube video:
Former Weekly editor Nick Schou posted this on Facebook:
Tasi turns up in former Weekly music editor Nate Jackson’s 2014 interview with Miguel Happoldt, the founder of Sublime’s label Skunk Records. Happoldt used the occasion to clear up misconceptions about the labels talent.
MIGUEL HAPPOLDT’S UN-TWISTED HISTORY OF SKUNK RECORDS
“As far as the acts that I personally said ‘This is who I’m backing,’ it’s very limited,” said the personal friend of Sublime’s late, great frontman, Brad Nowell. “It was the Ziggens, Sublime, Slightly Stoopid, Juice Bros, Philieano, Toko Tase, Paulie Nugent and he has another project called the Burn Unit. Those are the records where I woke up in the morning and said ‘I gotta put these records out, the public has to hear this.’”
Born Asofaatasi Malaki, Tasi leaves behind a daughter, Lilly, who he called “Bubbles,” according to the Post.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.
The police actually didn’t help him at all they let him die. The police arrested the bar tender for yelling at them to help Tasi. They probably couldn’t have saved him but they didn’t try.
It’s a sad work world we are living in and you can’t rely on any one especially the police they gunned down my only sister . I have lost all trust with the law rest in peace Toko. You will be missed
I heard the same thing. Long beach pigs let him bleed out…..
Really sad. He was a really good dude.
Anyone who says they let someone bleed out, should have done more then just stand there.
Call 911 again, report the shooting again, keep 911 on the phone and give them a play by play of what you are seeing this will be evidence because 911 calls are recorded If you keep 911 tied up on the phone reporting the officers are are now the problem a commander or supervisor will have to get on scene. I’m not saying it will change the outcome in a life or death situation but if you tie up 911 they will have to send out a cop who is worried about his job or how it looks if it happened on his watch.