By PAUL ANDERSON
An 81-year-old man was convicted this week of fatally stabbing his 11-year-old stepdaughter and attempting to kill his wife in their Garden Grove home.
Tanh Thien Tran was convicted Wednesday, April 1, of first-degree murder and attempted murder.
Jurors reached their verdicts about 2 p.m. Wednesday, but they were not read in court until Thursday morning, April 2.
Tran killed Anh Duong, 11, and attempted to kill his then-36-year-old wife, San Nguyen, on Aug. 29, 2018, at their home on Blossom Avenue.
Tran, who is scheduled to be sentenced May 28, faces up to 37 years to life in prison.
“A small Garden Grove community’s peace and tranquility of the morning light was shattered,” Deputy District Attorney Devin Campbell had told jurors in his opening statement.
Neighbors came out of their homes after hearing Nguyen’s “blood-curdling screams” of “Help me, he’s killing me,” Campbell said.
Tran, armed with a knife, initially kept officers at bay while making what prosecutors described as “superficial” cuts to himself. Anh Duong and her siblings, ages 6 and 3, were still inside the home.
Officers eventually were able to enter the residence and rescued the three children and attempted to revive the girl. She was taken to a hospital, where she was later pronounced dead.
The girl told officers, “My dad tried to kill me,” before losing consciousness, Campbell said. “Those were her last words.”
Anh’s “offense” was “trying to come to her mother’s aid as the defendant was brutally stabbing her in a closet,” Campbell said.
“The defendant came to believe she was cheating on him,” Campbell said, adding there were “flirtatious” messages on her phone with another man.
Tran searched his phone for information about GPS tracking devices and how to install them on a car, Campbell said. His online searches “got more sinister” when he tried to find out how to buy a gun, and if BB guns could be lethal.
Nguyen told him the night before the violent conflict that she was looking for a room to rent for him because she didn’t “want her kids living with him anymore,” Campbell said.
Tran, who was retired, would look after the children while Nguyen went to work.
She was preparing to go to work when he confronted her with a BB gun that looked like a handgun, Campbell said, and he fired a shot at an arm and then repeatedly stabbing her.
“She’s crying out, pleading for her life” in the bedroom closet, Campbell said.
Tran said he wanted to kill her and then take his own life, Campbell said, but he was interrupted by Nguyen’s daughter. Tran kept the girl out of the closet, but then changed his mind and pulled her in and “straddled her” while stabbing his wife, according to the prosecution.
Nguyen managed to run for freedom, but she looked back at her daughter who appeared lifeless, Campbell said. “She called out to her daughter and got no response.”
In a trial brief, Campbell said that when Nguyen was released from a hospital she returned home and found a journal her daughter had been keeping that alleged the defendant had been molesting her and that Tran’s online search history on his phone included looking for “pornographic videos of 15-year-old girls.”
Tran’s attorney, Eugene Sung of the Orange County Public Defender’s Office, said his client met his wife while he traveled in Vietnam. He was 69 and she was 33 years old.
Their “relationship turned romantic” in Vietnam, Sung said.
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