Story of Outcast’s Love for His Slain Woman Unfolds : Hearing: Kiem Do, who fled Vietnam with his sweetheart Hang Thi Thay Dinh, is held to answer in her fatal stabbing.

In a drizzling October rain on a Garden Grove driveway, 18-year-old Hang Thi Thay Dinh screamed, “Mother, he stabbed me! Mother, I am dying!” a policeman testified Thursday. Minutes later, her alleged killer, Kiem Do, told another policeman that he was sorry, that he loved Dinh and that he had stabbed her.

The death Oct. 26 ended a love that began in Vietnam between Dinh, a Vietnamese, and Do, the illegitimate son of an American and a Vietnamese woman. With Dinh’s parents and several other brothers and sisters, Dinh and Do fled Vietnam for a Philippines refugee camp, and then journeyed to America.

But four days after they arrived in Garden Grove, Dinh was stabbed to death. On Thursday, Municipal Judge Michael Beecher ordered Do to stand trial for murder, setting Feb. 18 for the Superior Court arraignment on the charges. Do remains jailed in lieu of $250,000 bail.

Do, as an Amerasian, was an outcast to many Vietnamese. But he was also eligible for entry into the United States under a 1987 law designed to help Amerasians. The Dinhs, who are Vietnamese and do not qualify for the special entry, came as part of Do’s family.

Police say Do expected to marry Dinh, but her father forced them to break up. Police also say that some Vietnamese refugees in Orange County’s Little Saigon think the Dinh family used Do as their ticket to America, then cast him aside after they arrived here.

In a two-hour preliminary hearing held to determine if there was enough evidence to require Do to stand trial, the only witnesses were Garden Grove police officers.

One, Peter Vi, testified about interviewing Dinh’s mother, Thieu, when he arrived at the site of the killing at a home on Teal Street. Do and the Dinh family had moved in there with a brother of Thieu Dinh.

He said Thieu Dinh was in the living room of the home, talking with a friend. Her daughter and Do were outside. She heard the scream, “Mother, he stabbed me! Mother, I am dying!” She ran outside and found her daughter covered in blood, lying in the driveway. She was pronounced dead at UCI Medical Center in Orange.

Another policeman, Elias Vasquez, said that when he stopped Do on a street not far from the murder site, “he began to say in broken English that he was sorry, that he loved her and that he stabbed her one time only.”