Shooting Inside Restaurant Puzzles Police

Garden Grove police said Monday they still have no suspects and no firm motive for a shooting inside a crowded Vietnamese restaurant that left two people dead and four wounded.

“We generally have three different theories,” Detective Ron Shave said of the shooting shortly before 2 a.m. Sunday at the My Nguyen Restaurant on Brookhurst Street. “We’ll proceed with all three.”

While declining to elaborate on those theories, Shave did say that investigators believe the gunmen, described as three young Asians, “apparently had an objective and we’re trying to sort out what that objective was.”

If there was an intended victim, Sgt. Bruce Beauchamp said, “The most likely one seems to be the manager of the restaurant. The reason for that is the fact that several of the shots were fired in his direction.”

The manager, Phuc Phung, 41, of Santa Ana was struck in the arm by one of the more than a dozen bullets fired inside the restaurant.

Police have been hampered in their investigation by the fact that many witnesses left after the shooting.

“There were 100 to 120 people in the restaurant when it happened,” Beauchamp said “When we arrived, there were only about two dozen left.”

Police now are looking for help from the community, he said. “We need some people who are willing to come forward to help us straighten out all the various versions we’re getting of what occurred.”

Quy Ngoc Nguyen, 23, of Long Beach and Minh Luu, 23, who lived in the Riverside County community of Sunnymead, died in the shooting.