Asian Boyz Member Sentenced

Four years after a bloody crime spree by the Asian Boyz gang in the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys, the last of the accused was sentenced to a lifetime in prison Tuesday.

As the six other gang members before him, Son Than Bui did not speak in his defense or declare remorse before Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Darlene Schempp sentenced him to six life terms without the possibility of parole, eight life terms that allow for parole after 15 years and 41 additional years for gun allegations.

During the hearing in Van Nuys, Schempp credited the defense lawyers with saving the lives of the gang members.

Prosecutors had sought death for five of the defendants, but a jury could not reach verdicts in one murder and later could not agree on life in prison or death for the remaining defendants.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Laura Baird, who led the prosecution team, said she considers the case a success.

“We were able to take seven violent gang members off the streets and put them away forever,” Baird said. “The victims in the case were happy because it obviously won’t bring back their family members, but it gives them some closure.”

Though authorities said Bui was not one of the gang’s leaders, he was convicted of the most crimes of all the defendants. A jury found him guilty of six murders and eight attempted murders.

The jury found he participated in the fatal ambush of rival Latino gang members on the lunar New Year in April 1995, where two men trapped in an alcove were shot repeatedly and then received a final execution-style bullet in the head. Bui, 22, was also convicted of taking part in the murder of three people the defendants believed were rival gang members. The shooting occurred on the San Bernardino Freeway. The sixth murder was another freeway shooting.

The seven-month trial was also marked by the slaying of the father of the state’s key witness. Dong Dinh was shot to death by an unknown gunman as he answered the door of his San Jose home, but authorities suspect the killing was in retaliation for the testimony of his son, Troung Dinh, against his former fellow gang members. The case remains unsolved.

The prosecution’s case relied heavily on the testimony of Dinh and another former Asian Boyz member, Paulo Prado.

Defense lawyers attacked the credibility of both witnesses, but the jury found enough corroborating evidence to convict all the defendants of multiple crimes.

Defense lawyers focused on the defendants’ immigrant backgrounds. Three of the four were Cambodian and one had spent his early years in the work camps during the bloody Khmer Rouge communist regime. A psychologist and psychiatrist testified that the experience left him with post-traumatic stress syndrome.

But the jury said the best thing the defendants had going for them was their ages. They were just too young to be put to death, jurors told the lawyers.

Instead, Bui, 22; David Evangalista, 23; Bunthoeun Roeung, 22; Sothi Menh, 23; Roatha Buth, 26; Kimorn Nuth,19; and Ky Tony Ngo, 22, will spend the rest of their lives in prison.

Bui’s mother arrived at the hearing moments after he had been led away in chains.

Though Huong Huynh said she was glad he had been spared the death penalty, she sobbed openly in the hallway.

“In the back of her mind,” said Long Bui, the defendant’s brother, “she always thinks he’ll get out.”