By John Hall, North County Times (California)
RIVERSIDE, Calif. - Four Asian gang members were found guilty Friday of taking part in a 2001 botched home-invasion robbery in Murrieta during which a police officer was shot. Although only one of the four actually fired the shots - one of which pierced the right thigh of Murrieta police Cpl. Steve Lang - the jury found all four guilty of attempted murder of a peace officer.
The law allows the jury to make that finding, in part, because the four were found guilty of committing their crimes to promote the activity of a criminal street gang.
A gang expert testified at the trial that all four men were either members of, or strongly associated with, violent Asian gangs based primarily in the Westminster area of Orange County.
“This verdict validates our (prosecution) theory as well as society’s total hatred of group crimes,” Supervising Deputy District Attorney John Monterosso said outside a Hall of Justice courtroom.
Giang Kien Huynh, 32, of El Monte; Khoi Van Phan, 28, of Hollywood; Toan Quoc Van, 30, of Santa Ana; and Nelson Wynn, 35, of San Gabriel all now face possible life sentences when they return before Judge Patrick Magers on March 4.
A fifth man, Nang “Nick” Van Tran, 25, of Santa Ana, pleaded guilty in October 2002 to one count of conspiracy to commit home-invasion robbery and will now also be sentenced. He agreed to a 10-year sentence in exchange for the guilty plea, according to testimony at the trial.
The men came to a quiet Murrieta neighborhood early Oct. 5, 2001, and were set to rob a home on Bayonne Court where a Vietnamese family lived. The intended victim testified at the trial that she had tens of thousands of dollars in cash and jewelry in the house.
But the robbery was thwarted when a woman living on the next cul-de-sac, Dartanian Place, awoke around 2 a.m. to check her sleeping infant and called police after she spotted a group of men park on her street, then walk toward Bayonne Court.
Officers arrived and found at least two of the men in the victim’s back yard. The men ran and the gunbattle happened seconds later.
In a crime like this, the prosecutor said, defendants are “joined at the hip.
“If you get together to do a crime, you’re going down together,” he said after the verdicts were announced.
With four defendants each accused of multiple crimes, it took the courtroom assistant 28 minutes Friday morning to read all the verdicts.
Van and Phan lowered their heads while the guilty verdicts were read, while Huynh and Wynn stared straight ahead as the jury’s decision on their counts were announced.
Van engaged in a gunbattle with Lang during which both men were hit. Van was hit a half-dozen times and survived. One of the shots he fired hit Lang’s leg.
Along with the attempted murder of Lang, all four were also convicted of conspiracy to commit a home-invasion robbery, attempted home-invasion robbery, and attempted burglary.
Van was also found guilty of being a convicted felon with a firearm and resisting arrest while personally using a firearm.
All four had been charged with the attempted murder of a second police officer, John Nelson, who chased a man he identified as Huynh over a fence and across Clinton Keith Road.
Nelson testified that he was shot at and then returned fire.
However, no gun belonging to the man who shot at him was found during multiple searches of the area by officers.
The jury found Huynh and the other three men not guilty of that count.
Virginia Blumenthal, who represented Wynn, said, “the jury obviously didn’t see the Nelson shooting” as presented by the prosecution.
The prosecutor said he realized the jury might have a difficult time finding the men guilty because no gun was found.
“It’s not an unreasonable verdict in light of the evidence,” Monterosso said.
But Phan’s attorney, Jeff Zimel, disagreed. He said outside the courtroom that he was disappointed with the verdicts.
Phan was the first to be arrested by police that morning while driving out of the Dartanian Place cul-de-sac.
Zimel told jurors at the conclusion of the trial that Phan had decided he no longer wanted to be a part of the crime and was leaving when he was stopped by officers.
“I thought Khoi (Phan) made a good choice to get out of there,” Zimel said Friday. “The jury didn’t see it that way.”
Now, Zimel said, Phan’s life is ruined.
“He made a bad decision to go with them and by the time he made the decision to leave it was too late,” Zimel added.
Blumenthal, Wynn’s attorney, said after the verdicts Friday that her client never had any intention to take part in any crime.
“If you are going off to do something like this, you don’t tell your wife you’ll be back in a few minutes,” Blumenthal said.
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