Suspect Must Stand Trial in Officer’s Killing

A Municipal Court judge Monday ordered Hung “Henry” Mai to stand trial on charges of gunning down a rookie CHP officer last July.

Judge Daniel T. Brice said Officer Don J. Burt might still be alive if his alleged killer had been in jail on an earlier assault charge.

The judge’s comment came at the end of the 25-year-old alleged gang member’s two-day preliminary hearing. Burt, also 25, was shot seven times after he made a routine stop of a motorist for a traffic violation on July 13.

The hearing was marked by testimony alleging Mai’s involvement in a Vietnamese gang and the counterfeit check ring it reportedly ran. In a jailhouse interview shortly after his arrest last summer, Mai denied he was part of the Long Beach gang.

Mai was being sought on assault charges at the time Burt was shot, sparking a round-the-clock manhunt that ended when a former associate of Mai’s turned him over to the FBI.

Testifying at the hearing Monday, the informant, Khang “Alex” Nguyen, said Mai bragged to him about the shooting while hiding in Nguyen’s Houston apartment after the slaying.

“He told me that his friends, they believe that he’s a hero for what he did. He was grinning and telling me that,” Nguyen said.

Nguyen had testified that Mai killed Burt because the officer stumbled onto proof of his ties to organized crime when a search of the suspect’s white BMW turned up a sheaf of forged payroll checks.

Under cross-examination by Mai’s attorney, Dennis O’Connell, Nguyen described his involvement in counterfeit checks and bank fraud predating his friendship with Mai--an illicit business that garnered Nguyen $5,000 to $10,000 a week.

Nguyen became a paid informant for the FBI after Mai’s arrest. He is now in the Witness Protection Program and has not been prosecuted for any crimes he admitted to the FBI.

In other testimony, Mai’s girlfriend, Vicki Pham, acknowledged under questioning by prosecutor Chris Evans that Nguyen had called her from Houston after the shooting, telling her something had happened.

Burt’s parents, his widow and other family members sat tight-lipped throughout the hearing, at times shaking their heads. Later they said they were relieved that Mai will go on trial in Superior Court for the shooting.

“None of this is for us, because nothing will bring Don back,” said Kristin Burt, 29, who was seven months pregnant with the couple’s first child when her husband was killed. “This is for the rest of the people out there so he can’t do it to anyone else.”

Don R. Burt, a CHP sergeant, said he was proud that testimony in the preliminary hearing attested to his son’s professionalism in the last moments of his life:

“He was businesslike, he was professional, he did what he was supposed to do, he died trying to make the streets safe for the public. We wear uniforms. The bad people don’t wear signs. You never know who they are.”

Mai will be arraigned on a murder charge Friday in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana. He could be sentenced to death if he is found guilty.

Mai is being held in Orange County Jail without bail.