Tustin Man Admits to Role in Ly Slaying

A Tustin man arrested in the stabbing death of honors student Thien Minh Ly said in a jail interview Sunday that he and an alleged juvenile accomplice were walking home high on marijuana when they decided to pick a fight with Ly and that it got “out of hand.”

Gunner J. Lindberg, 21, said he and the other suspect, a 17-year-old he called Domenic, were on their way home from watching the Super Bowl game when they saw Ly, 24, skating on the tennis court at Tustin High School.

“We walked by at first and Domenic was, like, ‘Hey, you think you can kick his ass?’ ” Lindberg said during the interview at the Orange County Jail in which he gave a clear, startling account of the fatal stabbing. “I said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ ”

“I walked over there because I wanted to see what he looked like--I didn’t want to hit on a kid,” he said. Ly “just skated up to me and I hit him and he fell down. I only hit him once. Domenic was just standing there. I said, ‘All right, I guess I won.’ ”

Then, Lindberg continued, “I just stood there and Domenic pulled out the knife and that’s when it happened.” Afterward, he said, the two walked back to their apartment and smoked more marijuana before passing out.

Ly, a former Tustin High student, was knifed more than a dozen times Jan. 28 at the school’s tennis court, where he often went to practice his in-line skating. A custodian found the body of the Georgetown University master’s graduate and former UCLA student leader the next day.

Lindberg and his friend, whom police haven’t identified because he is a minor, were arrested at their apartment in Tustin on Saturday. They remain in custody without bail, Lindberg at the Orange County Jail and the minor at the county Juvenile Hall. Murder charges are expected to be filed today, police said.

Gunner J. Lindberg

Police investigators said Sunday they don’t want to speculate who actually handled the knife during the incident. “At this point, we’re still trying to get more information from both suspects,” said Tustin Police Sgt. Brent Zicarelli.

Lindberg said during the interview that he did not tell police about the events because he wanted to talk to a lawyer.

Officers say they found white supremacist posters and symbols of Nazi Germany throughout the apartment and are investigating the killing of Ly, an Asian American, as a possible hate crime and an attempted robbery.

Zicarelli said Sunday that detectives were leaning more toward attempted robbery as the motive because Ly’s possessions were found scattered on the tennis court near his body.

Because officers found “some neo-Nazi type papers [in the apartment]. . . . We are looking into [the racial] aspect of it, but that’s very, very minor,” Zicarelli said. In interviews with the suspects after their arrest, the sergeant added, “they gave us indication that this is a robbery.”

During the interview Sunday, Lindberg said the attack was not racially motivated or about robbery. The suspect, who served more than three years in a Missouri prison for a shooting in 1992, also said police asked if he was ever involved in white supremacist activities while he was incarcerated there.

“I said, ‘No,’ ” Lindberg said. “I’m not prejudiced, I’m not racial, I’m not none of that. . . . When I was [in prison] in Missouri, I hung out with white guys. You had to hang out with your own ethnicity or you got killed.”

Lindberg also denied his friend was racist and denied having neo-Nazi memorabilia in his apartment.

But during the interview, he claimed that he stood by and watched while his companion allegedly stabbed Ly. He also said that he regretted his role in the stabbing. “If I could change it, I’d change a whole lot of things,” he said.

According to Lindberg, he and the 17-year-old had gone to a department store in Tustin where both work as stock clerks and smoked marijuana while watching the Super Bowl in a back room. They left the store, and as they walked they found a knife that was “bigger than a steak knife” on the side of the road. They wound up at a schoolyard near Tustin High where they smoked more marijuana and then went to get a soda at a nearby apartment complex. After that, they headed home.

The duo walked through Tustin High, which is not far from their apartment, and saw Ly skating on the tennis court. Lindberg said he wanted to fight Ly because “I love a fight. I used to box in jail in Missouri and I can beat someone to a bloody pulp.”

After the violent confrontation, Lindberg said, his companion threw the knife onto a freeway on their way home.

Asked if he was scared during the stabbing, Lindberg said, “I wasn’t scared. I’ve seen it happen from where I’ve been.” He said that he and his roommate talked about the event briefly after it happened but have not discussed it since.

Zicarelli said officers canvassed the area around the school but have not found the murder weapon.

Back at the apartment after the stabbing, Lindberg said, the juvenile would sit there and say Ly just died.

The two smoked “a lot more weed” and passed out, Lindberg said during the interview. During the search through the apartment Saturday, police said they also found clothes that appeared to be stained with blood. Lindberg said no blood from the stabbing got onto his clothes but that the 17-year-old did get splotches on his shoes. His friend threw away the shoes, Lindberg said.

Lindberg is also wanted on a Missouri warrant for a first-degree assault charge--the equivalent of an attempted murder charge in that state--for allegedly shooting a rival with a shotgun. Lindberg eluded a local manhunt that began in July.

In the interview Sunday, he said the shooting was self-defense. He said he eventually came to California where he used an alias, Jerry Lindberg, the name of his brother, who committed suicide. He and the 17-year-old had been living together for a few months. No information was available on the juvenile.

Before the alleged attempted murder, Lindberg served most of a five-year prison sentence for another first-degree assault after shooting an 11-year-old boy three times with a pellet gun in 1992.

Reached at home Sunday, Ly’s sister, Thu Ly, said her brother’s death “is even more senseless [in light] that it’s not a hate crime.”

“Just because they’re high on drugs, that’s no reason,” she said. “All this is even harder to take in.”

Ly graduated near the top of his class at Tustin High and went on to UCLA, where he received a bachelor’s degree in biology and English. In August 1995, he earned a master’s degree at Georgetown in Washington, specializing in physiology and biophysics. He had returned from Washington only weeks before his death to live with his family in Tustin and look for a job.

Family members said they last saw Ly when he left the house alone about 9 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 28, to go skating, which he did frequently for exercise. He had not brought his wallet so police were not able to identify him until that Monday afternoon.