Attempted Murder Verdict Hinges on Intent

Did a distraught husband mean to kill or merely injure the man he believed was having an affair with his wife?

The answer will determine how much time Henry Ngo Wu will spend in prison if he is convicted of shooting a Torrance business executive last year.

Wu, 33, went on trial in Torrance Superior Court on Thursday, charged with attempted murder in the shooting of Jonathan Baron, a vice president with CCH Computax Inc., the nation’s largest computer tax processing firm.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Mike Hall and defense lawyer Howard Beckler agree that Wu shot Baron last April 7.

Hall said in his opening statement that Wu had threatened to kill Baron a year before and that he was carrying out that threat when he fired three shots at Baron in a Torrance parking structure.

But Beckler argued that the defendant only wanted to injure Baron. “He did not intend to take his life,” Beckler said. “He intended to wound him because of the infidelity he believed had occurred.”

To convict Wu of attempted murder, Hall must prove that the El Monte man intended to kill Baron. Otherwise, the jury will probably convict Wu of assault with a deadly weapon, both sides agree.

The assault conviction carries a maximum 16-year sentence, while attempted murder could mean life in prison. With time off for good behavior, Wu could face 17 years in prison for attempted murder and just eight for assault with a deadly weapon.

Baron was in a wheelchair Thursday when he appeared in court, his legs still paralyzed from the shooting. The 37-year-old was once an avid runner but he said Thursday that he may never be able to walk again.

Baron testified that he had never had an affair with his co-worker, Wai Wu. But he said he had no doubt that the man who shot him last April 17 intended to kill him.

Baron had finished work at the Computax office near the corner of Torrance and Hawthorne boulevards that night and was opening the trunk of his car, parked in the office parking structure, when a man called to him, “Hey you!”

As he began to turn around, he saw a small Asian man, whom he later identified as Wu, sitting at the wheel of a car, Baron said. The bespectacled man raised a revolver and fired a shot that hit him squarely just below his chest, Baron testified.

The 37-year-old businessman said he dived for cover behind his car. But Wu drove around the other side of the car and fired two more shots that hit him in the thigh and buttocks, Baron said.

“At that point I decided to play dead,” Baron testified. “It was obvious to me that this guy wouldn’t go away until he thought I was dead.”

The ploy seemed to work, Baron said, as Wu sped away.

Wu surrendered to Torrance police four days later and has been held in lieu of $100,000 bail since then.

Baron, who was married a year before the attack, testified that he had worked with Wu’s wife, a former Computax accountant, but that their relationship was strictly professional. The executive said he had no warning that Henry Wu, a real estate appraiser with no criminal record, was out to get him.

Police and prosecutor Hall said they have no evidence that Baron and Wai Wu were having an affair.

Earlier Thursday, another Computax employee testified that Henry Wu had threatened a year earlier to kill Baron.

Joyce Johnson said she was a work friend of Wai Wu’s in April of 1988 when Henry Wu telephoned to say that he wanted to talk about his wife. Johnson said she met for lunch with an agitated Henry Wu, who said that his wife had been unfaithful and that he would kill Baron.

“I thought, ‘This is so absurd,’ ” Johnson testified. “All of us have been mad at one time or another and said . . . ‘I’m going to kill you!’ and not meant it.”

Beckler said in an interview that Wu is an ethnic Chinese born in Vietnam and that the revenge he sought is not uncommon in his culture.

“They believe that he has not only the right to do something in retaliation to right this wrong,” Beckler said, “but that he had to do this not only for himself, but for his family and for (his wife’s) family.

“He had to save face.”