Mother of ‘Twilight’ Victim, 7, Testifies

The mother of a boy killed in the “Twilight Zone” movie accident testified Thursday she was never told that her child would be near explosives or a helicopter or would be working without a permit.

Hoa K. Le, mother of 7-year-old Myca, was near tears as she described the giggling, happy child she accompanied to the movie set, only to lose him in a disastrous accident the following night.

She wept as she remembered her son urging her to come along to the movie set, saying, “Mom, I really really want you to go.”

At the location, she said, the children were costumed and made up for their roles.

“They tried to take pictures of the kids,” she recalled of her son and 6-year-old Renee Chen.

“Myca and Renee kept laughing and giggling. Mr. (John) Landis try to tell them not to giggle, that you’re laughing too much,” Le testified.

Landis, director of the film, is on trial with associate producer George Folsey, production manager Dan Allingham, special effects coordinator Paul Stewart and helicopter pilot Dorcey Wingo. All are charged with involuntary manslaughter in the accident that claimed the lives of the two children and actor Vic Morrow, 53.

The three were killed when a helicopter, flying through special effects explosives in a mock Vietnamese village erected 30 miles north of Los Angeles, crashed on top of them.

Le, a Vietnamese-American who is a social worker, recalled how she and the Chen family waited into the wee hours of the morning before the accident for their children to be filmed.

There was a delay, she said, and about 4 a.m., Folsey told her the film would not finish that night and asked that the children come back the following night.

“We said, ‘The children have a lot of good time here. They laugh and giggle,’ ” she recalled. “When they’re tired, they sleep in our arms. But I’m exhausted. I don’t want to come back. I have to go back to work.’ ”

She said Folsey then told her that the children could come without their parents.

“Mr. Folsey said, ‘You don’t have to come back. We pick up Myca and we treat your children like our own,’ ” she recalled.

But the next night, she said, her husband, Daniel, accompanied Myca to the set.

“Did you ever see Myca again?” Deputy Dist. Atty. Lea D’Agostino asked.

“No,” Le said, fighting back tears.

“Mrs. Le, did you know your child was not supposed to be working at night without a permit?” the prosecutor asked.

“I didn’t know,” Le said.

“Did George Folsey tell you that Myca was going to be anywhere near explosives . . . or a helicopter?” D’Agostino asked.

“No,” Le said, noting at one point she thought that they would pretend a helicopter was chasing them.

On cross-examination, Folsey’s attorney, Harland Braun, confronted Le with her statements four years ago to the National Transportation Safety Board, in which she said she knew that a helicopter would “come over and shoot and bomb the village.”

“No, no, no. That is not what I said,” Le protested.

On redirect examination, she recalled that Folsey gave each of the parents $500 in cash and told them that they would receive the same payment the following night.