Man Faces Death for Gang-Related Slayings

In the county’s first death-penalty case involving gang-related murders, a jury convicted Lam Nguyen on Monday of killing two men and injuring three others, two of whom remain paralyzed.

Nguyen, 23, of Westminster, showed no emotion as the Orange County Superior Court jury of eight women and four men announced the decision following nearly three days of deliberations.

In 1994 and 1995, Nguyen was involved in a series of shootings, drive-by attacks and other violent crimes that prosecutors believe is unprecedented in the county’s gang history.

“I can’t remember another gang-motivated case involving this many victims,” said Douglas Woodsmall, supervisor of the Orange County district attorney’s gang unit.

Jurors convicted Nguyen on 10 of 12 counts of murder, attempted murder and other crimes committed for a street gang. But it acquitted him of murder charges stemming from a 1995 shooting at a Westminster coin-operated laundry, Woodsmall said.

Because of the pending penalty phase, which is scheduled to begin Wednesday, neither jurors nor attorneys would comment on the verdict.

The spree of violence began in July 1994, when a drive-by shooting left a rival gang member paralyzed from the neck down.

Then, in November of that year, Nguyen chased another man into a Garden Grove arcade and shot him, again leaving the victim paralyzed.

The third attempted murder occurred in March 1995, when Nguyen fired a barrage at another gang member outside a pool hall in Stanton. The man recovered from his wounds, prosecutors said at the trial.

Jurors found that Nguyen, a reputed member of the Nip Family gang, had previously shot and killed Sang Nguyen in February 1995 at a restaurant on the edge of Little Saigon.

In that slaying, Nguyen stood in front of the business and waited for Sang Nguyen as he left the establishment, then shot the victim in the head, police said at the time.

In May 1995, Nguyen was involved in still another shooting with rival gang members in Garden Grove that left Tuan Pham dead.

Westminster police arrested Nguyen later that month as he walked into a medical clinic near Euclid Avenue and Westminster Boulevard to see a doctor, police said. Two officers who were at the clinic on a separate matter spotted Nguyen and captured him.

The surviving victims’ names are being withheld to protect them from possible gang retaliation.

The district attorney’s office tries from 10 to 15 gang-related murder cases annually, but Nguyen’s is the first in which prosecutors sought the death penalty, Woodsmall said. The majority result in life-in-prison sentences, he said.

“The fact that this was a gang-motivated crime was but one of many factors important in the decision” to pursue the death penalty, Woodsmall said. “We looked at all the circumstances surrounding the crime itself, the way it was committed and the background of the individual and we felt that this was a death-penalty case.”

The same jury will be asked to decide whether Nguyen should be executed or be sentenced to life in prison without parole.

If sentenced to die, Nguyen would become the first Orange County gang member to be on death row for killing his rivals.