‘My dad tried to kill me,’ dying California girl tells first responders, prosecutor says

“My dad tried to kill me,” a dying 11-year-old girl told police and paramedics after getting stabbed while trying to protect her mother, a prosecutor told jurors on Thursday, at the beginning of the murder trial for the girl’s stepfather.

Tanh Thien Tran, 81, is charged with killing his stepdaughter, Anh Yen Nguyen Duong, and attempting to kill his wife, the girl’s mother, San Nguyen, during a bloody attack on Aug. 29, 2018, at the family’s home in the 8900 block of Blossom Avenue in Garden Grove.

The mother’s screams for help as she escaped their home in blood-splattered clothing drew an immediate response from neighbors in the normally quiet area.

Police were able to get the injured girl — as well as her 3- and 6-year-old brothers — out of the home while Tran remained inside.

The girl’s final words came while she was on a lawn as paramedics tended to her. A knife had gone three and a half inches into her body, prosecutors said, striking the left side of her abdomen.

“She literally gave her life trying to save her mother’s life,” Deputy District Attorney Devin Campbell said during opening statements to an Orange County Superior Court jury. “She literally died because she tried and succeeded in saving her mom’s life.”

Tran also got into a standoff with police and made failed attempts to take his own life before being taken into custody, prosecutors say.

Tran’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Eugene Sun, told jurors that evidence will lead them to a different conclusion than the one alleged by the prosecution. But the defense attorney did not describe that other conclusion.

Tran met Nguyen while he was in Vietnam, his attorney told jurors. Despite the 40-year-age difference, Tran and Nguyen began dating and married in 2016, after he brought Nguyen and the three children to Orange County.

He had his retirement benefits and watched the children, the defense attorney said, while she worked to bring in extra money.

Campbell, the prosecutor, told jurors that Tran came to believe that Nguyen was cheating on him, adding that there were what appeared to be “flirty” or “romantic” texts with another man on her phone. Tran’s anger began “percolating, boiling up over time,” the prosecutor added.

The night before the attack, Nguyen told Tran that while she didn’t plan to divorce him, she was looking for another place to live with the three children.

The next morning, as Nguyen was getting ready for work, Tran shot her in the arm with a BB gun, forced her into a closet and then began stabbing her repeatedly with a knife, Campbell said.

Apparently hearing her mother’s cries, 11-year-old Duong came into the bedroom, the prosecutor added. Tran initially shut the closet door, the prosecutor said, keeping the girl from her mother.

The prosecutor alleged Tran grabbed the girl, threw her to the ground and straddled her body as he kept trying to stab her mother. The mother was able to escape from the closet and the home, Campbell said. Her two other children were apparently uninjured.

The prosecutor said Tran tried to take his own life by slitting his wrist, cutting his neck and poking a blade into his stomach. But all the wounds were superficial.

Tran — who listened to the court proceedings through Vietnamese-language interpreters — appeared overcome with emotion by the end of opening statements, leading Judge Lewis W. Clapp to call a temporary court break before moving to testimony.