Police Seeking Car of Fountain Valley Sex-Slaying Victim

Homicide detectives searched Monday for a stolen car that they believe may lead them to the assailant who raped and killed a 30-year-old Fountain Valley woman.

Hong Thi Nguyen was pronounced dead about 11 p.m. Sunday at Humana Hospital-Westminster. She had been shot once in the head a few hours earlier by an unknown assailant, officials said.

Police believe that the woman was attacked shortly after nightfall Sunday as she left the Garden Grove bridal shop where she worked as a seamstress. An employee at a drugstore in a nearby Brookhurst Street shopping plaza found her naked and unconscious about 7 p.m., left for dead in a back lot near some trash bins, police said.

The victim appeared to have been raped, and her white Toyota MR2 was missing and apparently stolen, police said.

Friends and family gathered Monday afternoon in numbed silence at her home in Fountain Valley. They said she had lived there for about a year with her husband and an infant child.

“We’re still in a state of shock,” said one friend who asked not to be identified. “She was such a kind, gentle lady; I can’t imagine how anyone could so something like this.”

Another young woman at the home added: “There is a lot of sadness here right now, a lot of crying.”

Nguyen held a second job as a production worker at a Santa Ana electronics plant called the Microsemi Corp., where a relative also works.

“The news got around here pretty quickly,” said Mark Scheel, a superintendent at the plant. “I just couldn’t believe it. The girl was . . . very sweet, always smiling.”

The killing was the eighth of the year in Garden Grove, according to Police Lt. Chuck Gibbs. Police had about 20 investigators working on the case Monday, pulling in detectives from outside the homicide detail to assist in the case, he said.

Gibbs said one lead had taken his detectives outside the county, but he declined to discuss the investigation in detail. “We’re following up a bunch of leads and gathering information,” he said.

Police do not yet have any prime suspects in the attack, nor any witnesses, he said.

Perhaps the biggest potential lead in the case is the victim’s car, with the license plate 2CMN571. Police are asking anyone who may have seen the car since Sunday night to call (714) 741-5704.

“This is a unique one,” Gibbs said, “because you’ve got several crimes involved--a homicide, a rape, a robbery and an auto theft. You don’t find many like that.”

Gibbs said unspecified “personal effects” were also taken from Nguyen.

A manager at the Perfect Bride, the shop where Nguyen worked as a seamstress, refused comment on the case, saying: “We don’t want to say anything about it now. Not a word.”

The victim’s husband, who friends said spent much of the day talking with police, could not be reached for comment.