2 Slain, 4 Wounded in Restaurant : 3 Assailants Flee After Carrying Out Gangland-Style Shooting

Two people were killed and four others were wounded early Sunday morning when a group of men suddenly opened fire with pistols inside a crowded Vietnamese restaurant in Garden Grove, police said.

Three men, described only as Asian, carried out the gangland-style attack that erupted shortly after 1:40 a.m. in the My Nguyen restaurant at 14282 Brookhurst St., according to investigators.

The assailants fled immediately after the shooting, and police said Sunday afternoon that they had no suspects or motive for the killings.

The dead were identified as Quy Ngoc Nguyen, 23, a recent engineering graduate of Cal State Long Beach, and Minh Luu, 23, who lived in the Riverside County community of Sunnymead.

Luu was struck in the chest and Nguyen in the neck; both were dead by the time paramedics arrived, according to Sgt. Randy Tucker.

Details Are Sketchy

Accounts of the shootings Sunday were sketchy, and in some ways conflicting. With the pandemonium in the 100-seat restaurant, few witnesses had a clear recollection of what happened. And while police and the restaurant manager said there was a “possibility” that the incident was gang related, other witnesses were doubtful.

Nguyen’s sister, Thao Nguyen, 26, said her brother had never been involved with any gangs and that he and a friend had just stopped by the restaurant, which stays open until 3 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, to eat before going dancing.

“He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Nguyen said. “He was a very good kid in the family. He never talked back and never got in any fights. It’s very hard to accept.

“It’s very unfair that a kid who came here for freedom” had to die like that, she said.

Among the wounded, Tucker said, were Phuc Phung,41, of Santa Ana, the manager of the restaurant that had opened last Feb. 19 in a small, 10-unit shopping center south of Westminster Boulevard, and busboy Rigoberto Pacheco-Nava, 21, of Garden Grove.

Pacheco-Nava was reported in stable condition after surgery for a leg wound at Westminster Humana Hospital. Phung was treated for an arm wound at the same facility and released.

Also injured were Tam V. Huynh, 20, of Fountain Valley, who was struck in the foot by a bullet, and Loc V. Tran, 25, of Riverside, who was treated for an arm wound at Medical Center of Garden Grove and released.

Investigators were somewhat hampered in obtaining descriptions of the killers and finding out how many there were, as well as exactly what happened, Tucker said, because “most of the people were ducking under tables to get out of the way.”

Additionally, he said, many customers were gone by the time police arrived, having left quickly after the shooting stopped.

Tucker said some witnesses told police that the gunmen “just stood up from the table where they were eating and opened fire.” He said it did not appear they were after anyone in particular because “they just seemed to be shooting randomly.”

Conflicting Version

However, a conflicting version of the incident was provided in an interview Sunday afternoon by Phung, the manager, who was in the bar when the shooting started.

With his daughter, Thanh, acting as an interpreter, Phung said he was told by police and other witnesses that “some Vietnamese people went in to shoot somebody and the other people shot back.

“I think they were having a fight, sort of like a gang fight,” Phung said. “They were having an argument outside the restaurant and then went inside and started shooting.”

Pacheco-Nava, also speaking through an interpreter, said he was pushing his bus cart through the restaurant when several of four people seated at table No. 4 opened fire, apparently trying to hit an unidentified woman at a nearby table.

“Then another guy at Table 12 pulled out a pistol and fired shots all over the restaurant,” Pacheco-Nava said. The woman was not injured, he said.

Huynh, who suffered several shattered bones in his right foot when he was struck by a .45-caliber bullet, said he and a friend had just ordered dinner when the shooting started.

“I don’t know why (it happened),” Huynh, an electronics assembler, said after undergoing surgery at Fountain Valley Community Hospital. “We just went in there . . . and I got shot in my foot.”

Huynh said that after he was hit he “just laid down” because he was fearful of being shot again.

‘Everything Just Blew Up’

His companion, who declined to be identified, said the two men “had just been sitting there a few minutes and everything just blew up. You know, James Bond movies--that’s what everything looked like.”

The man said he saw only two men, at most, who appeared to be involved in the shooting. “I can’t tell you what he looked like,” he said of the man who apparently shot Huynh. “Just all of a sudden he was up and running.” Asked if the shootings appeared to have been planned, the man said: “It seems like if they had somebody in mind, why did they shoot a whole bunch of people?”

Sunday’s shootings occurred just a block from the scene of an ambush attack involving members of the Vietnamese community four years ago.

At 2:30 a.m. on Oct. 11, 1981, two gunmen wearing ski masks entered the Hoang My restaurant and opened fire with shotguns, killing one woman and wounding five other people, including two Marines. No suspects were ever arrested in the case.