Woman Slain as 12 Children, Husband Are Held at Gunpoint

As her husband and their 12 children sat in the living room with four guns trained on them, a Vietnamese woman was shot to death while she prayed at her bed, Santa Ana police said Tuesday.

Five masked gunmen, all Vietnamese between 16 and 20 years old and armed with pistols, charged into the modest home late Monday, police spokeswoman Maureen Thomas said. Four of them forced the family to sit in the living room while another ransacked the rest of the house; the fifth gunman then shot Huyen Thi Hoang.

As the shot echoed in the home, the marauders fled. Hoang, 46, died at the scene. Her husband and 12 children, who range in age from 4 to 21, were not hurt. Investigators say the attack apparently was a failed robbery attempt. “From all indications,” Thomas said, “the victim was shot without provocation.”

The victim’s children said they believe that their mother, whose nightly ritual was to pray at her bed, was shot because the gunman’s mask slipped off and he panicked.

And as they grieved Tuesday morning with relatives and friends, their mother’s death became an almost unbearable epilogue to the family’s history.

When Saigon fell, the family and others--22 in all--fled in a rickety boat built by the father, floating for five days before the boat sank off the Malaysian coast. They dogpaddled for hours before a Korean ship rescued them.

After the Monday night tragedy, they tried to piece together the two minutes before the shooting.

Kim Huong Ngo, 19, returning from night school, had pulled into the family’s driveway at 10:15 p.m. “when a guy came up to me,” she said.

“He had a scarf around his nose and mouth, so at first I thought it was someone playing a joke,” she said. “But then he asked for the keys. I told him I didn’t know where they were.”

The man called her a liar, grabbed the keys and ordered her from the car. Four other men approached, another wearing a scarf, two wearing what appeared to be towels and the fifth with his T-shirt pulled up over his lower face, she said.

The intruders walked her to the front door, which her brother opened. They rushed in and held the family at gunpoint, demanding money, the victim’s daughter said.

The gunman with his shirt over his face began walking down the hallway and checking bedrooms. “He walked into each bedroom but found nothing. Then he went into the bedroom where she was praying. I heard her scream, ‘Oh my God,’ and then I heard the gunshot.” After that, they all ran out of the house,” Kim said.

“She was a housewife,” the daughter said. “All she did was cook and clean and take care of the children. . . . Everything happened in about two minutes.”

Michael Tran, a family friend, said: “After they left, the father went in to check and find out what happened. When he saw his wife, she was lying on the floor and not moving. He turned her over but she could not speak. He tried resuscitation, but the police told him it was too late.”

Kim said that she could not identify the assailants from police photos.

Although the attackers ransacked the house at 1306 S. Huron Drive, they left with nothing.

While some of the 12 children have jobs and are in college, the family “had little of any value to take,” Police Sgt. Collie Provence said.

Trung Ngo, who supported his family in Vietnam by hauling food from the jungles to sell in Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, is unemployed. Police say he has learned computer programming in this country, but, at 59, has had difficulty finding a job.

Ngo said Tuesday that he had married 30 years ago in a town about 100 miles from Saigon. In May, 1976, his family fled from Vietnam in a boat he built. It was two yards wide and six yards long.

“We left at about 7 a.m., had to plan everything very carefully. It took five days and four nights to come to Malaysia. There were 22 people, 12 members of the family. We had to swim for about three hours before (being) picked up by a Korean ship.”

They stayed in a refugee camp another six months before being relocated to San Diego, where the family lived for two years while Ngo worked at an electronics firm. They moved to Santa Ana when he got a job in Orange County, but a year ago he was laid off.

Members of the family said a neighbor told police that he saw a group of young men casing the tract in late afternoon in a dark green Datsun on four separate occasions recently.

“I haven’t heard that. I have really no information on that,” Provence said. He speculated that the intruders may have thought the family had money because of the number of cars parked in front.

“It was a robbery, but I can’t understand why they picked this family,” Tran said. “This is a terrible thing to happen, especially in our community. They have 12 children.”