Gunman Dies in Irvine Shooting

A Garden Grove man died early Wednesday when a bullet he had fired at a co-worker outside an Irvine company went through the victim’s cheek and hit the gunman in the chest, authorities said.

The shooting at Power Wave Technologies occurred at 12:45 a.m. and was precipitated by a weeklong feud between the two workers over the use of tools on the company’s assembly line, a police spokesman said. The gunman, identified as 22-year-old Thuan Dinh Nguyen, placed the worker in a chokehold before firing the .380-caliber handgun at 29-year-old Kevin Ho’s head, which was between the gun and Nguyen’s chest, officials said.

“They got a little ticked off at each other and decided to take it outside,” said Lt. Sam Allevato of the Irvine Police Department.

Officials said they aren’t sure whether Nguyen was carrying the gun the entire time or got it out of his car when the pair walked out to the parking lot.

Tori Richards, a spokeswoman for the Orange County district attorney’s office, described Nguyen as a former gang member who was once targeted by a special gang prevention unit.

Nguyen had pleaded guilty to several crimes in the last five years, including assault on a peace officer, assault with a deadly weapon and preventing a witness or a victim from testifying, Richards said.

Both Ho and Nguyen were temporary workers at the business, said company President and Chief Executive Bruce Edwards. The company has been in business for 15 years and makes power amplifiers for wireless communications systems, he said.

“It looked like it was an isolated incident,” Edwards said. “It was just a dispute between two employees.”

Edwards said the two men were technicians, proficient in the testing and tuning of power amplifiers.

Ho, who also lives in Garden Grove, was taken to Western Medical Center-Santa Ana, where he was listed in fair condition with a flesh wound.

The business has about 1,500 permanent and temporary employees, Edwards said. The graveyard shift, which begins between 10:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m., consists of about 300 workers.

ProStaff, a national staffing agency based in Minneapolis, received Nguyen’s application last September and eventually placed him in a job, Allevato said.

ProStaff general manager Karen Kerr said she could not release any personal information about Ho or Nguyen.

the company does as much research of an applicant’s background as its client requires for the type of position, Kerr said. Criminal records are retrieved by computer from background-checking agencies, she said. “We do references,” Kerr said. “We do as much as we can get in this day and age.”