Property owner Rodney Peairs (/piːrz/)[5] fatally shot Hattori, erroneously thinking that he was trespassing with criminal intent.

The killing and Peairs' trials received worldwide attention, initiating discussion about race relations and attitudes toward Asians in the United States.

[6] He was 16 years old when he went to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States, in August 1992 as part of the American Field Service (AFS) student exchange program; he had also received a scholarship from the Morita Foundation for his trip.

Hattori was hosted as a homestay student in Baton Rouge by Richard and Holley Haymaker (a college professor and a physician, respectively) and their teenage son, Webb.

[7] Two months into his stay in the U.S., Hattori and his homestay brother Webb Haymaker received an invitation to a Halloween party on October 17, 1992, organized for Japanese exchange students.

Hattori went dressed in a white tuxedo in imitation of John Travolta's character in the film Saturday Night Fever.

Haymaker was wearing a neck brace due to a recent injury and bandages as part of a Halloween costume.

Haymaker ran to the home next door for help, returning with a neighbor to find Hattori badly wounded and lying on his back.

[5] The shot pierced the upper and lower lobes of Hattori's left lung and exited through the area of the seventh rib; he died in an ambulance minutes later from blood loss.

[10] Initially, the Baton Rouge Police Department quickly questioned and released Rodney Peairs and declined to charge him with any crime because—in their view—Peairs had been "within his rights in shooting the trespasser".

Peairs's defense was his claim that Hattori had an "extremely unusual manner of moving" that any reasonable person would find "scary".

[citation needed] The defense further argued that Rodney Peairs was, in large part, reacting reasonably to his wife's panic.

[17] The lawyers for Hattori's parents argued that the Peairses had acted unreasonably: Bonnie Peairs overreacted to the presence of two teens outside her house; the couple behaved unreasonably by not communicating with each other to convey what exactly the perceived threat was; they had not taken the best path to safety—remaining inside the house and calling the police; they had erred in taking offensive action rather than defensive action; and Rodney Peairs had used his firearm too quickly, without assessing the situation, firing a warning shot, or shooting to wound.

[25] The Hattoris and the Haymakers lent their support to the Brady Bill (originally introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives in 1991), which mandated background checks and a five-day waiting period for the purchase of firearms in the U.S.[26] It was signed into law by President Clinton on November 30, 1993, as the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act.

Bonnie Peairs rejected notions that her reaction had been racially motivated, stating that, "... it was his fast movement toward that door that scared me so bad, not the color of his skin.

"[1][2][3] In 1997, filmmaker Christine Choy released a documentary film about Hattori's death called The Shot Heard Round The World.

[32] Dick Haymaker established two endowed scholarships designed to honor Yoshi: the Yoshihiro Hattori Memorial Scholarship provides financial aid to students from Japan, and the Yoshihiro Hattori Memorial Fund, for Off-Campus Study is available for those who plan to study in Japan.