3 Guilty in Restaurant Slayings : Crime: A flirting look was blamed for the shooting deaths of two and the wounding of four others in the My Nguyen restaurant in Garden Grove four years ago.

A gang leader and two of his devoted followers were found guilty of first-degree murder Monday in random shooting at a Vietnamese restaurant in Garden Grove in 1985 that left two people dead and four others wounded.

“This is a message to these guys who think they can terrorize the Vietnamese community: No more. They now have to answer to the American justice system,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeoffrey L. Robinson said after the verdicts were read in Superior Court here.

Convicted were Hung Ly, 23, of Fountain Valley, identified as the leader of the Pomona Boys, and Ninh Xuan Nguyen, 24, and Dat Tien Phan, 20, both of Santa Ana. Ly and Nguyen face automatic sentences of life without parole because of the multiple murders. Phan, who was a juvenile at the time of the shootings, will be remanded to the California Youth Authority, but he could be transferred to state prison after leaving a youth facility at age 25. Two others who were not in the restaurant pleaded guilty during the trial to lesser charges. A fifth man arrested is likely to have charges against him dismissed, lawyers involved in the case have said.

The shootings on Nov. 17, 1985, at the My Nguyen restaurant on Brookhurst Street was prompted, according to evidence presented during the trial, simply because one diner gave a flirting look to Jennifer Dang, a young girl that Ly had been dating. But prosecutor Robinson told jurors that the incident may have been only the catalyst for Ly and his followers to make a show of force to the restaurant owner and other business leaders in the Vietnamese community.

Killed were Quy Nog Nguyen, 25, of Long Beach, the man who reportedly had glanced at Ly’s date, and Minh Luu, 23, of Sunnymead. Wounded were the restaurant owner, another employee and two other diners.

No arrests were made in the shooting incident for more than two years, primarily, police say, because witnesses were too afraid to come forward. Dang, for example, received a death threat the day before she first testified at a preliminary hearing.

The defense lawyers emphasized to jurors during the trial that many of the witnesses, Dang included, had told various versions of what happened, and that some had even denied knowing anything about it.

But several of the jurors told Robinson later that they had no problem with the varying accounts.

“They realized that these were people who were just plain scared to talk at first,” Robinson explained.

An intense investigation by Garden Grove Police Department Detectives Ron Shave and Glenn Overley eventually turned up several eye witnesses who were in the restaurant.

According to their testimony, Ly left the restaurant after giving orders to at least three others to shoot up the place. Dang testified that she and Ly later met in a room above a liquor store with several others, including Ly’s two co-defendants, where they excitedly described what had happened to their leader.

At the trial, the defense was beset with problems.

Dat Tien Phan had made a statement to police incriminating himself, and several witnesses identified him as a gunman. Another witness who came forward insisted that Ninh Nguyen was not among the gunmen, but she did identify Dat Phan.

Ninh Nguyen’s attorney, William M. Monroe, had his own problems. One witness whom he called in an attempt to clear his client--Monroe later dubbed her the “Vietnamese Zsa Zsa Gabor”--rattled on without being asked that she knew Ninh Nguyen to be a young man of outstanding character. That is highly damaging in a criminal trial, because it then allows prosecutors to come back in rebuttal with character evidence that they otherwise would not be able to present to a jury. In this case, it allowed Robinson to show jurors for the first time that when Ninh Nguyen was arrested, he was carrying a gun.

“I really feel bad about this whole thing,” Monroe said later about the jury’s verdict. “I really got to know this kid over the past year, and he’s a good kid. He says he was there, but that he didn’t do it.”

But Monroe did offer an explanation why the shootings occurred.

“Hung Ly is the kind of guy who can get people to follow his lead,” he said. “My guy comes from a good family; he just got in with the wrong crowd.”