Slayer Gets 33 Years; Vietnamese Are Praised

A man whose first-degree murder conviction was made possible by unusual cooperation between the Vietnamese community and police was sentenced Friday to 25 years to life in prison.

Judge Jean Rheinheimer in West Superior Court in Westminster imposed the sentence on Thong Van Dang, 18, for the April 19, 1985, shooting death of 40-year-old Sam Dung, and added eight years for other counts.

“What impressed me about this case . . . is the help we received from the Vietnamese community,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Maguire said.

Several Apprehensive

Maguire pointed out that although several witnesses were apprehensive, they still took the witness stand.

“I was happy to see (that) the law-abiding Vietnamese community would come forward and help us to convict someone who was victimizing them,” the prosecutor said.

Police in Orange County have long complained about the difficulty of getting cooperation from the county’s Indochinese population, who number an estimated 60,500 out of 2.1 million residents.

“It’s my perception that there’s great apprehensiveness on the part of the Vietnamese not to trust our system, not to trust the police, the prosecution system, and to be more afraid of the criminals, maybe for fear of retaliation,” Maguire said, adding:

“I think for the most part it’s unfounded, but there has been that fear to come forward. I’m just hoping that the Vietnamese community will see that when we do get criminals who are preying on them, we’ll prosecute them and hopefully punish them appropriately.”

Maguire said that Dang and four other robbers, masked and armed, entered a house in Westminster late at night and stormed into a back room to confront several adults and children.

Maguire said that Dang warned the victims in English and Vietnamese to “stay where you are” and fired a warning shot into a wall. As the victims scurried around the room and asked the robbers to take what they wanted and leave, a lamp blinked off and then back on, Maguire said.

As it did, Dang fired a shot that hit Dung in the neck, according to testimony.

Although Dang was masked, people at the scene “recognized his voice and stature,” Maguire said. “Despite their fear of him and his cohorts, they identified him and the police subsequently, a week or two later, were able to make an arrest.”

Dang was also convicted of robbing a Vietnamese-owned pool hall in Garden Grove on Jan. 1, 1985, and was sentenced to five years for that. Additional terms of two years for using a gun in the murder and one year for using a gun at the pool hall were added, making his total sentence 33 years to life.

Maguire credited testimony by the pool hall owner and several witnesses in the Westminster residence with helping to convict Dang.

The prosecutor said that Dang still faces a charge of attempted murder for the shooting of a Vietnamese in Santa Ana, as well as several charges of burglarizing automobiles.