Bandit Killed in Santa Ana Home Invasion

By JAMES M. GOMEZ

Nov. 19, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SANTA ANA — In a hand-to-hand struggle with four armed robbers Sunday night, a veteran of South Vietnam’s national police force and his son killed one of the assailants and captured another.

The bandits, who had broken into the Santa Ana house and pistol-whipped Phu Van Tong, 56, threatened to kill his family if he did not surrender his cash and jewelry, police said.

But Tong drew a hidden weapon and shot one of the gunmen point-blank in the chest.

“I shot a lot of Communists” during the fall of Saigon, Tong said Monday, his head and hand bandaged from the grisly ordeal. “But this is the first time I killed anybody since then.”

The dead man’s identity was not immediately known.

A second assailant, Dai Dahn, 19, who had held Tong’s 26-year-old son Hai at gunpoint, was wounded in the ensuing fight. Dahn, who police allege is a gang member, was arrested on suspicion of murder and armed robbery.

The two other robbers escaped. Family members said they did not know their attackers.

The shooting marked the first time this year that a home invasion--a frequent tactic of Asian gangs--resulted in a death, authorities said.

Phu Van Tong, who came to the United States days after the fall of Saigon and has since become an engineer, was not charged in the 9:16 p.m. killing in his Columbine Street home.

Police believe the attack was random, but family members speculated that the bandits could be linked to an April, 1990, break-in at the house, in which cash, jewels and four firearms were stolen. No one was home at the time.

One of the stolen pistols was traced later to a slaying in San Francisco, police said. A black Nissan Maxima, whose keys were found in a pocket of the dead man, was registered in Oakland.

“They think we have a lot of money,” Tong said. “But we don’t. They are foolish.”

While detectives stood outside the two-story home Monday morning, Tong and his family recalled the harrowing night, pointing to bloodstains that remained along a hallway and the jackets the bandits left behind in their haste to get away.

Blood “was everywhere,” said Hai Tong. “I was covered with blood.”

Hai Tong, a manager for a swank Newport Beach restaurant, said the robbers appeared in the living room while he and his younger sister were on the sofa watching the television comedy “Married With Children.”

In interviews Monday, family members gave this account of the bloody confrontation:

The four men--described only as Vietnamese, in their early 20s and dressed in dark clothing--walked into the living room from the hallway, having gained entry to the house by cutting a screen in an open bathroom window.

Two of the robbers placed blankets and jackets over the siblings’ heads, and held them at gunpoint. The other two headed for the master bedroom where Phu Van Tong and his wife, Nguyen Tong, slept.

“He said if I moved or peeked, he would kill me,” Hai Tong said. “I didn’t know what they were going to do.”

The men awoke the parents and demanded in Vietnamese: “Where do you keep the money and gold? Don’t lie to us,” Phu Van Tong said.

Before he could answer, the gunman struck him in the temple with a pistol and began to rough up Nguyen Tong.

As she knelt against the bed, she slid her hand into a crevice and gingerly pulled out a small-caliber handgun, pushing it slowly under the covers toward her husband, he said.

Phu Van Tong kept the gun hidden there, while the bandits dragged his wife kicking and screaming into another bedroom.

One of the gunmen returned to the bedroom, leaned over the bed to grab Phu Van Tong and lost his balance. As he fell on top of Phu Van Tong, the 17-year police veteran thrust the barrel into the robber’s chest and fired.

“He yelled, ‘You shot me, you shot me,’ in Vietnamese,” Phu Van Tong said. “I said, ‘I don’t care.’ ”

In the living room, Hai Tong heard the gunshot. Thinking one of his parents had been slain, he threw off the blanket and began pummeling one of the armed guards; the other, Dahn, sprinted toward the bedroom.

The wounded gunman, who was running from the house, passed by the fistfight in the living room and fired several times at Hai Tong as he fled out the front door. The shots missed.

While two of robbers went out the back door and over a fence, Hai Tong grabbed his cellular phone to call 911--the bandits had cut the phone lines--and headed out the front door to catch the wounded man.

The remaining robber, who had entered the bedroom, attacked Phu Van Tong. An expert in martial arts, Phu Van Tong slammed him into a closet and kicked him repeatedly.

Phu Van Tong appeared to have the upper hand in the wrestling match until the bandit, identified later as Dahn, allegedly pulled a knife from his right boot and began stabbing the older man.

Dahn escaped as Phu Van Tong collapsed from exertion and loss of blood.

Hai Tong, meanwhile, caught up with the wounded robber a block from the house. He subdued and disarmed him. The man later died at the scene, police said.

A moment after Hai Tong had taken the wounded robber’s weapon, he saw Dahn running by. He fired the gun and then ran after Dahn, catching him a block away. Dahn had a bullet wound in a buttock, police said.

Dahn was taken to a local hospital, where he was being held Monday on charges of armed robbery and first-degree murder, police said. The murder charge stems from a law that allows authorities to prosecute the partner of someone killed in commission of a crime.

Police, who arrived moments later in more than a dozen police cars, blocked off the quiet street just north of MacArthur Boulevard. They were unable to find the other two suspects.

Phu Van Tong was treated for stab wounds at Coastal Communities Hospital in Santa Ana. He spent Monday at home.

Hai Tong said that although he is concerned that the two escaped assailants may come back, he would do the same thing again.

“I didn’t care what was going to happen to me,” Hai Tong said. “I just needed to protect my family.”