Jurors Urged to Convict Alleged Gang Members

After three months of trial, during which the defendants became suspects in the arranged killing of the key witness’ father, prosecutors called on Van Nuys jurors Thursday to convict seven alleged members of the notorious Asian Boyz street gang of multiple murder.

Summing up a case based largely on two gang members who turned state’s evidence, prosecutors asked jurors to believe their testimony documenting seven slayings and 15 attempted slayings.

“You may not want any of these people in your home,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Laura Baird said, “but that’s not the issue here. The issue is whether or not you believe these witnesses based on all the evidence presented in this case.”

Baird and Deputy Dist. Atty. Hoon Chun asked jurors to believe the word of the two admitted violent thugs and rely on exhibits featuring the murder weapons, maps of shell casings, photos of the defendants’ tattoos, and the testimony of other witnesses for corroboration.

The witnesses recounted a deadly ambush on a rival Latino gang, an armed mission to seek out and shoot other gang members and run car-to-car gun battles.

Defense attorneys have hammered at the former gang members--who were given immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony--and picked at inconsistencies, saying the state’s key witnesses are opportunistic liars who are laying blame on the innocent to save themselves.

The defendants, Son Thanh Bui, 22, David Evangalista, 23, Bunthoeun Roeung, 22, Sothi Menh, 23, Roatha Buth, 26, Kimorn Nuth, 19, and Ky Tony Ngo, 22, have denied being members of the gang. Some were college students at the time the crimes were committed, including Evangalista, who was an A student.

All but Nuth and Ngo face the death penalty if convicted.

As the principal state’s witness, Truong Dinh, was wrapping up his testimony in October, his father was gunned down by an unknown assailant as he answered a knock at the door of his San Jose home. Authorities there say the only motive they are investigating is retaliation or intimidation in connection with the Van Nuys trial.

Authorities were protecting Dinh but not his family because they said they thought that killing a relative was taboo even for this gang, which was once before suspected of killing a witness in a murder trial. The March 1996 killing of another Asian Boyz thug-turned-state’s-witness crippled a pending murder prosecution.

The murder of 64-year-old Dong Dinh led officials at three agencies to increase what was already tight security surrounding the ongoing Van Nuys trial.

Officers in assault gear have periodically blocked the surrounding streets when the defendants arrive and leave the courthouse. Armed guards protect prosecutors around the clock. Seven bailiffs block every entrance and exit to the courtroom.

The strain on security is such that the county’s head criminal judge said that, in hindsight, the case should have been held in the high-security courtrooms of the Criminal Courts Building in Los Angeles.

The Asian Boyz gang is made up of Cambodian, Vietnamese and Filipino members whose families immigrated to the United States in the 1970s. They are accused of follow-home and home-invasion robberies in which they mainly targeted members of their own ethnic communities.