Case Triggers an Outcry From Asian Activists : Crime: Vietnamese man charged with murder when friend is killed by guard in alleged robbery gains supporters, who say authorities misperceived him as a gang member.

The future looked bright for Tu Anh Tran that night in April when he and a neighbor went out for an evening of billiards, beer and an after-hours bite at a Westminster restaurant.

Tran, 22, was just a few months away from getting his associate of arts degree at Rancho Santiago College and making plans to attend the University of Iowa--not far from his father’s home in Des Moines and a big step closer to Tran’s dream of one day becoming a soccer coach.

But the late-night outing took a deadly turn. A table-spilling fracas ended when an off-duty security guard fatally shot the neighbor and wounded Tran--both of whom, police say, were part of a group that demanded the guard’s pistol and then beat him with a tire iron and sprayed him with Mace until the guard opened fire in self-defense.

Now Tran, who denies joining the fight and who never fired a shot, faces a possible life sentence for the friend’s murder because of his alleged role in the beating. The case has threatened Tran’s once-soaring hopes and become a cause celebre among some Asian American activists, who contend that he is being railroaded by authorities who misperceived him as a gang member.

The case features uncommon legal issues--centering on when a suspect is liable for the death of an alleged accomplice--and ironies aplenty. Among Tran’s backers during a recent demonstration was the mother of the slain neighbor.

“It’s a frightening case,” said Tran’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Jeff Lund. “You have a man who was not directly responsible for the death of his friend--who we believe was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Tran is accused of the murder of his friend and attempted murder and robbery of the security guard, who was not charged in connection with the April 2 shooting at the Pho Tien Canh restaurant. Tran’s alleged weapon was a canister of Mace that police said was stripped from the guard during the melee and used to spray him as five to 10 men pummeled him. The incident came amid a string of headline-making shootings at local Vietnamese cafes and eateries.

Prosecutors declined to discuss details of the Tran case, which is scheduled for trial Dec. 5 at Orange County Superior Court.

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Though the case is being tried by gang specialists in the Orange County district attorney’s office, prosecutors denied labeling Tran a gang member and stood by their decision to try him under a provision that allows a suspect to be charged with murder when a “provocative act” results in deadly force and death. The theory has been used to prosecute murders ranging from fatal robbery attempts to gang shootouts, including one last year in Orange that killed a 15-year-old bystander.

The night of the Westminster incident began amiably. Tran invited his neighbor, a reclusive 37-year-old machinist named Kinh Van Chu, to join him for some pool. The two later stopped at a nightclub for beers and then ducked into Pho Tien Canh for soup about 2 a.m., Tran said in a jailhouse interview. They joined a table of men who had been at the same pool hall earlier, Tran said.

The off-duty guard, Narin S. Thong, 26, was eating with another group at a table nearby. After Thong got up to pay, witnesses said, he was confronted by Chu and others who demanded his gun, then beat him with a tire iron and a three-foot metal rod. Police said Thong fell to the floor and dropped his 10-millimeter pistol. Tran sprayed Mace into Thong’s face, according to a restaurant worker who testified at a preliminary hearing in August.

But the guard managed to fight off the crowd and recover his pistol, police said, then opened fire. Two people were hit. Chu was struck once in the hand and once fatally in abdomen. Tran was shot once in the back and taken by bystanders to a nearby hospital, where police later tracked him down.

His attorney acknowledged that Tran initially gave police a false name and misled them about where the shooting took place but said it was because he feared gang reprisals.

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The cause of the fracas is disputed. Police said Thong, who wore street clothes but was carrying his gun and Mace underneath a jacket, was being robbed. Thong told police he believed gang members in the group wanted to kill him in retaliation for kicking gang members out of the Stanton billiard hall where he worked, according to a police report.

Thong was licensed to carry a gun as a security guard but did not have a permit to carry a concealed weapon, according to records and testimony. Last year, he fatally shot a suspected robber while on duty at a Long Beach club in an incident police ruled a justifiable shooting, according to Long Beach police.

Tran said the incident at the restaurant began as “chitchat” between Thong and Chu. Tran said he had gotten up to pay his bill at the restaurant and does not know how it escalated into a full-blown fight, with Chu issuing an apparent challenge: “So, you think you’re so tough!”

Tran said he rushed over to break up the fight and was shot in the struggle. He said he never touched the Mace canister, which was not recovered.

The murder case has mobilized members of Orange County’s Vietnamese immigrant community and stoked the efforts of a civil rights group that in the past has criticized the police practice of photographing suspected gang members.

The Alliance Working for Asian Rights and Empowerment (AWARE) has organized demonstrations outside the courthouse in support of Tran, charging that authorities have pursued the case because they suspect him of being a gang member. His supporters say police may have misinterpreted tattoos meant to memorialize Tran’s late mother and self-inflicted cigarette burns following her death in Vietnam almost six years ago.

“I was never in a gang and never, ever knew anyone in a gang,” Tran said.

Tran wrote to one of AWARE’s members from jail after reading the memoirs of her family’s flight from Vietnam in the 1980s. Convinced that Tran was wrongly accused, members of the year-old group quickly took up his cause, visiting him in jail and steering media attention to the case.

“The people are just concerned that people are being mislabeled. That’s the fear,” said co-founder Daniel C. Tsang, a political science instructor at UC Irvine. “It seems to me he would not have been charged with the crime if police had not assumed he was a gang member. . . . We’re worried a whole generation of Asian youth are being mislabeled.”

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Deputy Dist. Atty. Robin Park declined to comment on most aspects of the case, including its handling as a gang crime. But she noted that prosecutors have not named Tran as a gang member and did not attach specific gang allegations to the charges already against him.

Park urged critics to wait for the trial before drawing conclusions. “I can understand how difficult it is for people outside of the system and the case,” she said. “They really should refrain.”

Tran has no criminal record but is facing a 1993 misdemeanor charge of resisting a law enforcement official, according to court records. No further information on the incident was available.

Relatives and friends portray Tran as a quiet, hard-working student who picked up English quickly after emigrating from Vietnam with his father, two sisters and younger brother. A month after resettling in Iowa in 1988, they received news that Tran’s mother, who stayed behind, was killed in a car accident. Following Vietnamese custom, Tran branded his love for his mother on his shoulder with the image of an eagle and the words, “A bird without its flock.”

Tran later attended high school in Denver, staying with a family friend while his father juggled work and night classes to complete his college degree. The younger Tran aspired to become a soccer coach and chose junior college in California, where the sport seemed more popular.

He shared a Garden Grove home with Chu’s cousin, whom he had met in a Philippines refugee center while awaiting immigration to the United States.

“He’s such an innocent guy. He’s kind of like my older brother,” said roommate Quan Do, 20, who car-pooled with Tran to Rancho Santiago College in Santa Ana and spent weekends with him playing soccer and pool. “He rarely got mad. And if he did, he wouldn’t say anything and would just go to his room.”

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Before the shooting, Tran was on the verge of completing his degree and planning to transfer to the University of Iowa, where he could be nearer to his family and away from California’s crime, said his father, Thanh Van Tran.

“He was ready to come home,” he said. “He wasn’t very happy in California because the living conditions were turbulent. The crime and violence turned him off. He was getting homesick too.”

Experts said the sparely used provocative-act theory behind the prosecution may be more difficult to prove than conventional charges because prosecutors must show that Tran, though not directly responsible for the killing, was nonetheless involved a crime he knew could result in deadly force.

Among those looking on when the trial begins will be the parents of the late Kinh Van Chu, who are contemplating a civil lawsuit but haven’t decided against whom.

Chu’s mother, Hoi Mong Do, recently visited Tran in jail and said she does not blame him for the death of her oldest son.

“That was just an unfortunate night,” she said. “It was bad luck.”