Clues In Double-Killing Hard To Come By Language, Cultural Barriers Make Investigation Tougher Than Usual, Police Say
Detectives tried Tuesday to make inroads into Spokane’s Vietnamese community to learn more about a young couple killed Monday on the North Side.
Local Vietnamese residents turned to each other for comfort and solace, trying to comprehend the killings.
“They are a close, tight community,” said Detective Jim Peterson, lead investigator of the double-killings. “From where they come from, police can be just as bad as the criminals.”
Language and cultural barriers make the tedious process of investigating the homicides even slower, Peterson said.
Johnny Hagan Jr., 26, and Hong Nga Thi Pham, 23, were bound, shot and killed sometime after sunset Sunday and before dawn Monday. Their Vietnamese friends called them Sang and Nga.
The couple returned about 9:30 p.m. Sunday from gambling at the Two-Rivers Casino, 50 miles northwest of Spokane, said family friend Tran Hung.
Friends called at 4:30 a.m. and no one answered the phone. Neighbors found the couple’s 3-year-old son, Thien, crying outside the apartment about 5 a.m. The boy is known as Johnny III by the family’s American friends.
The couple’s 1-1/2-year-old daughter, Pang (Diana to the family’s American friends), was in her bed during the killings.
The children have been taken in by Hagan’s mother, who lives in Pasco. She is staying with friends until the bodies are released after autopsies on Thursday.
“The older one, he knows just a little bit, what is going on. The younger one, she doesn’t know anything,” Hung said. “The boy, he woke up crying, “Mommy! Daddy!” last night. I don’t what he is thinking.”
A Russian immigrant who lives in the apartment above the victims told detectives he may have heard gunshots sometime between midnight and 2 a.m., Peterson said.
“What I don’t understand is why there wasn’t any yelling and screaming,” Peterson said.
When the neighbor who found the boy saw the bodies inside the apartment, the first person she called was grocery-store owner Tieng Thanh at home.
“She can’t speak English too good. She didn’t know what to do,” Thanh said. “I told her to call 911.”
Thanh owns the Phuoc Thanh Vietnamese grocery store on North Hamilton. Most of the Vietnamese community shops there, Thanh said. Pham and Hagan were his customers.
Thanh said he and Hagan also would share rides to Seattle, where Hagan would rent Vietnamese videos, bring them back to Spokane and rent them out again.
“Those children, it’s really pitiful that someone did that to them,” Thanh said.
Paul Eng, owner of the apartment complex at 3203 N. Smith, said the family had lots of visitors, probably because of their video-rental business.
“They were all Vietnamese,” Eng said. “Sometimes they would come very late at night, sometimes very drunk.”
Peterson said he and other detectives were having a hard time producing solid leads to follow in the killings. “We’ve interviewed a lot of people and we’re not getting very far,” he said.
For instance, detectives learned that a group of people used to play cards at the apartment, but no one will say who, Peterson said. “They just don’t want to talk about it,” he said.
Investigators are planning to offer a reward for information through the Secret Witness program, Peterson said. They hope to produce television and newspaper advertisements of the reward in Vietnamese, he said.
, DataTimes