Double Murder Stuns El Toro Neighborhood

A blind man and a paraplegic were killed and another man was seriously wounded early Thursday in a hail of bullets that erupted during an argument and shattered the midnight peace of a north El Toro neighborhood, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman said.

Police learned of the slayings after the wounded man escaped through a window and staggered to a neighbor’s house. Collapsing on the porch in a pool of blood, he pleaded for help but refused to name his attacker, witnesses said.

“We don’t know exactly what happened yet,” said Orange County Sheriff’s Capt. Andy Romero, head of investigations. “We don’t have anything nailed down. All we know for sure is that some kind of disagreement occurred that caused this terrible thing to happen.”

The shooting occurred around midnight inside a single-family home on Summer Creek, a two-block-long residential street near El Toro Road. It was the first violent crime to hit the decade-old neighborhood of tract homes, located in a small valley a quarter of a mile north of Trabuco Road.

Dai Tran Nguyen, 45, who has rented the house with his wife, 20-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter for about two years, sustained a number of gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene, Sheriff’s Lt. Richard J. Olson said.

Also killed was Nhan Hau Duc Nguyen, 20, no relation, who had been visiting the family for the evening, Olson said. Nguyen was paralyzed last year in a stabbing that damaged his spinal cord.

Dai Tran Nguyen’s son, Duc Dien Tran Nguyen, was hit with gunfire in the left arm and side and right thigh. He was listed in serious condition in the intensive care unit at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo.

For their protection, the wife and daughter, also home at the time of the shooting, were not identified by authorities.

As detectives spent much of the day in the tan-colored house taking photographs and logging evidence, curious residents milled outside the yellow tape that stretched across the tree-lined street and kept gawkers from inching too close to the murder scene.

Throughout the day, children on spring break rode bicycles or skateboards slowly past the deputies and watched the grim work with fascination. Adults shook their heads with shock.

“I can’t believe that something like this could happen to this neighborhood,” said Paul Ternovacz, 37. “It wakes you up and makes you realize that you don’t just see it on TV or read about it in the paper.”

Ternovacz’s wife, Patti, 37, and others described the neighborhood as close-knit. With the exception of the Nguyen family, everyone was acquainted with each other.

“I don’t even know when they moved in,” said Rosalind Scholnick, 71, who has lived in the neighborhood since it was built. “That’s how quiet they are.”

Sheriff’s officials said the Nguyen family had two dinner guests Wednesday night--Nhan Hau Duc Nguyen and another man who fled the scene. Little is known about what happened during the evening except that an argument broke out around midnight. “They all knew each other,” Romero said. “That much we know.”

The disagreement escalated into the shooting, he said. Detectives were not sure if there was more than one shooter or if more than one weapon was used. Romero also declined to say if a weapon was found at the house, how many shots were fired or in which room the victims were found.

Olson said that through interviews, detectives discovered that 20-year-old Huy Anh Hgo, also known as “Timmy,” was at the house during the shooting. Homicide detectives were seeking him for questioning.

“We really want to find this guy,” said Olson. He would not say whether he is a prime suspect in the shooting.

Hgo was last seen driving a borrowed 1982 gray Pontiac Bonneville with the license number 1PWN292, Olson said.

Witnesses said that after being shot, Duc Dien Tran Nguyen plunged through a front window to escape. From there, he staggered down the street, leaving a trail of blood. When he got to a corner house, he began pounding on the door, yelling for assistance.

A woman who lives at the house said that she woke up with a start when she heard the loud screaming and went to answer the front door.

“As soon as I opened the door, he collapsed,” said the woman, who asked not to be identified. She said that Duc Dien Tran Nguyen begged her to call his home and see if anyone was left alive.

“I just went into automatic shock,” she said.

Instead of calling her neighbor, the woman grabbed a blanket for the wounded man and then dialed 911. The deputy who received the call kept the woman on the line and directed her to ask Duc Dien Tran Nguyen if he could identify his attacker.

“The kid wouldn’t say a thing,” she said.

As sheriff’s detectives, with the help of a Vietnamese interpreter from the Westminster Police Department, interviewed Dai Tran Nguyen’s widow, the mother and friends of the other slaying victim grieved at his mother’s Mission Viejo home.

“He was just starting to get back into things,” said Nhan Hau Duc Nguyen’s mother, Kiem Le. “He was a very happy young man. This is very tragic for our family.”

The killing was not the first tragedy involving her son, a Saddleback College student, the mother said.

Nine months ago, Nguyen’s dreams of becoming a psychologist were temporarily derailed by a stabbing incident that left him a paraplegic, Kiem Le said.

The parents declined to give any details about the stabbing except to say that it severly damaged their son’s spinal cord.

Double Homicide Site of homicides on Summer Creek