Gunmen Fire Into Restaurant Crowd; 2 Killed

Customers ducked behind partitions and sought shelter under tables Sunday morning as a team of gunmen opened fire--apparently at random--in a crowded Garden Grove Vietnamese restaurant, killing two people and wounding four others.

Police said the murderous assault was carried out by three young men who fled immediately afterward--as did a number of patrons.

Garden Grove Police Sgt. Randy Tucker said investigators were hampered in obtaining a clear description of the killers because so many witnesses left before police arrived and because “most of the people were ducking under tables to get out of the way.”

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

Struck in Head and Chest

Tucker said Luu was struck in the chest and Nguyen in the neck. Both men were pronounced dead by paramedics.

Among the wounded, Tucker said, were Phuc Phung, 41, of Santa Ana, manager of the My Nguyen Restaurant, which had opened last Feb. 19 in a 10-unit shopping center on Brookhurst Avenue south of Westminster Boulevard, and busboy Rigoberto Pacheco-Nava, 21, of Garden Grove.

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

Also injured were Tam V. Huynh, 20, of Fountain Valley, who underwent surgery at Fountain Valley Community Hospital for a foot wound inflicted by a .45-caliber bullet, and Loc V. Tran, 25, of Riverside, who was treated for an arm wound at Medical Center of Garden Grove and released.

Nguyen’s 26-year-old sister, Thao, 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,” the sister 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.”

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 that they were after anyone in particular because “they just seemed to be shooting randomly.”

Victim Tam Huynh, an electronics assembler, said he and a friend had just ordered dinner when the shooting started.

Shot in Foot

“I don’t know why (it happened),” Huynh said. “We just went in there . . . and I got shot in my foot.” He said that after he was hit, he just lay down because he was fearful of being shot again.

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.”

Asked if the shootings appeared to have been planned, he shook his head.

“If they had somebody in mind,” he said, “why did they shoot a whole bunch of people?”

But restaurant manager Phung voiced a conflicting view.

In an interview Sunday afternoon during which his daughter, Thanh, acted as 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.”

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 ski-masked gunmen entered the Hoang My restaurant and opened fire with shotguns, killing one woman and wounding five other people, including two Marines.

No one was ever arrested in that case.