Tragic Father ‘Who Cared Too Much. . .’ : Man, 4 Children Are Buried; Family Is Numbed by Slayings

There were five white hearses, four of them each carrying a small white casket, the other a full-size brown coffin.

They were trailed on their somber journey to Loma Vista Memorial Park on Friday by bewildered relatives and friends who were still trying to figure out why a father had killed himself and his children in a fire.

The brown casket held the body of Duc Dang Luong, 41, whom the Rev. John P. Lenihan described during the funeral Mass at Anaheim’s St. Boniface Catholic Church as “a man who cared too much” and whose love led him to irrational action.

The white caskets held the bodies of Luong’s children--10-year-old Lynda, who was in a class for gifted and talented students at Alexander J. Stoddard Elementary School in Anaheim; 8-year-old Diana, an avid baseball player; 6-year-old David, remembered earlier this week as having a little boy’s penchant for chasing little girls on the playground of Melbourne A. Gauer Elementary School; and 3-year-old Joanna, described by one neighbor as “a doll.”

Their badly burned bodies were found huddled with their father’s early Monday in a bedroom of an Anaheim home. The fire that killed them apparently had been started by Luong with a flammable liquid, police said.

“These children had been held tenderly by their loved ones while still alive,” the Rev. Joseph Son Nguyen, also of St. Boniface, said in Vietnamese at the graveside ceremony at Loma Vista on Friday morning. “And now they will be held tenderly by the earth.”

Shortly thereafter, the children were laid to rest together in one grave while Luong was buried in another. Luong’s wife, Hang Le Thi Tran, stared off into the distance, emotionally spent after hours of sobbing.

Family members said Tran had recently asked Luong for a divorce because he objected to her plans to further her education and get a job.

Two weeks ago, the couple complained to relatives, and Tran’s father and Luong’s elder brother had counseled them to compromise, according to the brother, Quyen Luong. But a week later, Tran left and took the children to live with her father.

She allowed them to be with their father all day Sunday. About 1:50 a.m. Monday, a passerby saw flames coming from a bedroom and alerted neighbors to call police. Relatives did not know about their deaths until nearly four hours later, when Tran’s father, Phan Tran, came to pick up the children, Quyen Luong said.

While family members gathered around the graves, friends stood afar and speculated in lowered voices. They declined to give their names.

“Duc was too silent; he held everything in. Did you ever see him smile?” asked one woman.

“It’s true he seldom smiled,” a man answered. “He had a temper, too. Maybe it was that he could not talk things out.”