Teen Charged in Mall Shooting Faces Count of Street Terrorism

Sen Nguyen lived a mother’s nightmare.

Her 13-year-old daughter, Phuong Nguyen, was near death this week after two bullets allegedly fired by a reputed gang member at the Westminster Mall struck her in the back.

“Doctors kept telling me at first there might not be any hope for her, and I was afraid every time the phone rang,” Nguyen said Friday. “But I came in to see her (Thursday afternoon), and she opened her eyes to look at me. That’s when I knew she will live.”

While Phuong’s condition was upgraded from critical to stable Friday, the Orange County district attorney’s office charged Phong Thanh Dang, 18, a junior at La Quinta High School in Westminster, with four counts of attempted murder and one of street terrorism.

Phuong, who just finished seventh grade at McGarvin Intermediate School, was with a group of friends Wednesday afternoon on the mall’s first level when five to eight gunshots rang out from the second-floor balcony. As Phuong was treated for her wounds, she told police that Dang was the gunman who ran away, investigators said.

Detectives staked out Dang’s house overnight in the 100 block of South Cooper Street in Santa Ana and arrested him at 2:15 a.m. Thursday.

The victim’s family said they do not know how Phuong was acquainted with Dang.

“I’ve never seen him come to the house,” Sen Nguyen said. “I don’t allow boys to come to the house.”

On Friday, Police Detective Thomas Green talked to Phuong, now able to speak in a whisper, at UCI Medical Center in Orange. Investigators still are trying to find a motive for the shooting, he said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. John Anderson said Friday that the shooting was gang-related and “done in association with a gang” but declined to discuss how any of the three teen-age girls who apparently were the intended victims knew Dang.

The charges could send Dang to prison for at least 60 years if he is convicted, said Anderson, who specializes in handling gang cases.

Under the state Street Terrorism Act that went into effect in 1990, members of street gangs can be prosecuted for their gang membership when they are accused of gang-related crimes.

Dang’s public defender declined to discuss the case because he had not yet reviewed the court documents.

Dang hung his head during his court appearance Friday in Municipal Court in Westminster. A young woman believed to be Dang’s girlfriend watched him intently during the court hearing but hid behind a newspaper and refused to speak to reporters.

Dang’s arraignment was postponed until July 22, and Judge Michael Beecher set his bail at $500,000, as requested by prosecutors who contended Dang might flee.

But Green said police still do not know if Phuong was the intended target or she just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time--as her mother believes.

“One of my daughter’s girlfriends who was there at the mall called to tell me that it was just Phuong’s bad luck that day,” she said.

Nguyen said Phuong, the fifth of her nine children, “goes out a lot, but she’s just a child. She doesn’t know anything about gangs.”

As for Dang, he might have been introduced to gangs by a former tenant at his parents’ home, his paternal grandmother said Friday.

“My grandson is so stupid,” the 72-year-old woman said in Vietnamese. “He hangs around with hoodlums, and they threaten him that if he doesn’t do something they want, they would hurt him.

“I just heard about this shooting, and I came over here to wait for my son, so I can ask him what Phong had to do with it,” she added.

The grandmother, who did not want to be named, emigrated from Vietnam to live with Dang’s family three years ago, she said. Dang is the eldest of two sons. His parents work long hours at their beauty salon in Long Beach, and the boys’ friends spend a lot of time at the home, she said.