Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS : COURTS : Boys Convicted for Roles in Murder of Woman

The two defendants had confessed on tape to police. They were among the five who had stormed into a home in Santa Ana last May, held a family of 14 at gunpoint, then fled, leaving the 46-year-old mother shot dead as she prayed in her bedroom.

They offered no defense. They were found guilty of first-degree murder. They were 12 and 13 years old.

“It’s sad,” said Dennis McNerney, attorney for one of the boys. “Peer group pressure gets to these Vietnamese kids. They want to impress people, so they get some guns and they get involved in something like this.”

The boys--Quoc Kien Ngo, 12, and Man Huynh, 13, both of Anaheim--denied firing the shot that killed Huyen Thi Hoang, the mother of 14. Police are still searching for Sau Van Le, 14, of Garden Grove, who is accused of pulling the trigger. (The boys said that Sau Van Le told them he shot the woman by accident when she screamed and startled him.)

Two others--Dun Nguyen, 17, and Tien Van Nguyen, 20, both of Garden Grove, have been arrested and face trial for murder and robbery.

The boys also denied carrying guns, but the victim’s family members told police that all of the intruders were masked and had guns. All but two of 14 children were home at the time of the robbery and murder.

McNerney had argued in Juvenile Court that the boys did not realize they could be found guilty of murder if they confessed to the robbery. Under California law, all participants in a felony can be held for murder if the crime results in anyone’s death.

McNerney’s argument failed, however, and the boys’ confessions were replayed in court. No defense, not even a closing argument, was offered.

“What was there to argue?” McNerney said. “We tried to keep the confessions out. Once we lost that, it was a clear case of felony murder.”

He said the boys are sorry that the woman was shot but have shown hardly any remorse about the robbery itself.

McNerney asked for the boys to be sent directly to the California Youth Authority. “Maybe there they can get some kind of education, learn to improve their English and maybe learn some kind of trade,” he said. “At least it will keep them away from their neighborhood gangs for a while.”

But the prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Jill Roberts, asked for a probation report before sentencing. She called the crime “highly aggravated” and recalled statements by the family of repeated death threats from the robbers.

“A family is watching television at night and in a few minutes are completely terrorized,” she said.