2 men sentenced to death in killing
Nearly 13 years after one of the city’s most brutal slayings, two members of a Vietnamese street gang were sentenced to death Friday for torturing and murdering an 18-year-old college student during a home invasion robbery gone awry.
Ronald Tri Tran, 33, and Noel Jesse Plata, 33, both of Santa Ana, were found guilty last year in the 1995 murder of Linda Park, a freshman at Irvine Valley College.
Plata and Tran hogtied Park and tortured her until she revealed where her family had hidden its valuables. They beat Park, slit her throat and strangled her before fleeing with about $500 in cash and jewelry worth $10,000. Park’s father found her bloody body covered with a blanket face down in the entry of their home when he returned from work.
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