Suspect in El Toro Death Surrenders

WESTMINSTER —  Nearly four days after a hail of midnight gunfire shattered the calm of an El Toro neighborhood and left two people dead, a 19-year-old man quietly walked into the Westminster Police Department Sunday and turned himself in, police said.

“The guy just walked right up to the front desk of the Police Department and wanted to turn himself in regarding a murder investigation,” said Westminster Sgt. Dwight Moore, the watch commander on duty Sunday.

The suspect, sought by police since last week on a murder warrant and named in press accounts, was identified by Moore as Joseph Anh Ngo, 19, of Rancho Santa Margarita. He is also known as “Huy” and “Timmy,” police said.

According to previous accounts by Orange County sheriff’s investigators, Ngo was involved in a fatal confrontation Thursday in El Toro over a young friend’s reluctance to join him in a retaliatory hit against rival gang members.

Ngo and Nhan Hau Duc Nguyen, 20, of Mission Viejo allegedly were seeking revenge for a gang attack last year outside a cafe in Westminster’s Little Saigon that left Nhan Nguyen paralyzed from the waist down, investigators said.

When Duc Dien Tran Nguyen, 20, refused Ngo’s requests last Thursday to get involved in the pay-back scheme, a fight erupted between the three men, investigators allege.

Duc Nguyen was shot in the left arm and stomach at his El Toro home and is listed in stable condition at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo. His father, Dai Tran Nguyen, 45, was shot and killed when he tried to stop the fight. Nhan Nguyen, unrelated to the father and son, then apparently shot himself to death.

Unharmed, Ngo fled the scene.

The Sheriff’s Department later put out a warrant for Ngo’s arrest on a charge of murder, but investigators have not detailed his role in the shootings.

Ngo’s brother, Steven, said Sunday night that he knew nothing of his younger brother’s surrendering to police.

Reached at the Rancho Santa Margarita home that he shares with his brother, Steven Ngo said: “I know about that incident (in El Toro) . . . but I don’t want to tell you anything now.”

He added that he did not know where his brother had been since the fatal shooting.

Westminster was the site of the gang attack last year that apparently led to last week’s violence, and Westminster police interpreters had assisted the Sheriff’s Department in the El Toro investigation. It was not immediately clear why Ngo had decided to turn himself in to the Westminster police.

Moore declined to comment on any statements Ngo may have made at the Westminster station.