Born Fung Jing Toy (Chinese: 馮正初; Jyutping: fung4 zing3 co1; pinyin: Féng Zhèngchū) in Kow Kong, Foshan city, Canton, China, around 1864, Little Pete emigrated to the United States with his family at the age of five in 1870.
Little Pete, wearing a steel-reinforced hat and chain mail, managed to fight the men armed with hatchets and clubs, driving them off and soon throughout Chinatown he was considered invincible.
Little Pete regularly began to walk around Chinatown in his chain mail armor, accompanied by three bodyguards, as his regular payoffs to city officials, particularly Christopher Augustine Buckley, convinced rivals of Little Pete's influence in San Francisco.
This fear of Little Pete using his influence to eliminate his rivals may have been the cause of hired Tong assassins Lem Jung and Chew Tin Gop who attacked Little Pete in a barbershop with one of the assassins grabbing him by the hair and shooting him five times in the spine under his chainmail on January 23, 1897.
Lem Jung and Chew Tin Gop later returned to China as wealthy men as a result of Little Pete's murder.