Gang Rivalry in Slaying Questioned

The combination of guns, gangs and a man trying to protect his girlfriend brought an abrupt, fatal end to a weekend dance party in Van Nuys, authorities said Monday.

As a party raged inside the Golden Valley Auditorium early Sunday, 21-year-old Burbank resident Son Hua Le was involved in what police believe was a heated and long-standing argument with another Asian-American woman in the parking lot. As the two began to fight, a crowd circled and watched.

Det. Bill Park of the Asian Crime Investigation Section of the Los Angeles Police Department said Tony Nguyen, 21, of West Hills may have been simply trying to protect Le, his girlfriend, when he was shot to death by friends of the other woman. Le was shot in the head and critically wounded while an unidentified 15-year-old girl, who was not involved in the fight, was taken to a hospital with gunshot wounds. The girl, from Los Angeles, was apparently an innocent bystander.

“It looks like Ngyuen was pulling the two girls apart from each other,” Park said. “In the process he may have pulled the girl’s hair. The suspects could have mistaken that for him hitting her in the head.”

Though Park said Le and Nguyen were affiliated with a gang called the Asian Boys, the shooters may not have been rival gang members. Park said the altercation between the two women was probably personal and not necessarily sparked by a gang rivalry or incident. But since Le and Nguyen were affiliated with gangs, it will be ruled a gang-related shooting.

Police were still interviewing witnesses and had made no arrests Monday.

“Nowadays, people can get shot over a look,” Park said. “So we don’t know what the mind-set of the shooter was in this situation.”

The incident highlights a frequent but rarely reported reason gang members shoot: arguments over women. Regardless of their race or background, gang experts say, young men eager to prove themselves and “flex” for their girlfriends sometimes resort to gunfire. Easy access to weapons only complicates the equation, Park said.

This shooting is also evidence of growing violence among the nearly 10,000 Asian gang members in Los Angeles County. Last year alone, reported crimes involving Asian gang members in the San Fernando Valley doubled, with at least five murders and six attempted murders attributed to them. Park said more young Asians, especially Southeast Asians, are emulating black and Latino gang members.

“It’s always been true that some of these kids from war-torn countries like Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos get involved with gangs,” Park said. “They may not know about war directly or have grown up with the violence of their parents, but they occasionally take on the characteristics of gangs.”

Sheriff’s Deputy Duncan Jefferys said the situation is likely to heat up as summer approaches.

“People haven’t been looking at them in a long time, but groups like the Asian Boys have been trying to get involved in everything,” he said. “It seems that they are at war with everybody.”

Preventing gang violence is difficult enough, Park said, but with scarce resources in the county to deal with language and cultural differences among Asian gangs, the problem may only worsen.