Spokane Valley homicide was captured on home surveillance cameras installed out of fear of victim’s son

The killing of a Spokane Valley man was captured on home surveillance cameras installed by the victim out of fear of his 30-year-old son Duy Bui-Nguyen, who confessed to killing his father, according to court documents.

Huynh Bui, 61, was found dead in his home in the 13100 block of East Heroy Avenue early Tuesday morning by his wife. She immediately suspected Bui’s son was responsible because he had been “acting crazy” recently, according to court documents.

She returned home around 9 p.m. Monday to Bui-Nguyen kicking the side of her car and “chasing her off,” court documents say. She told deputies she spent the night at a friend’s business out of fear.

When she returned home the next morning, she found Bui dead on the floor. The garage doors were open and Bui’s truck, a black 2004 Ford F-150 truck with checkered yellow flames on the side, and phone were missing.

According to court documents, Bui’s head and shoulders were surrounded by puddles of drying blood and he had bruising on his neck and multiple abrasions on his face.

A video surveillance system, which Bui’s wife told deputies he had installed because of Bui-Nguyen’s recent behavior, captured the slaying. It showed Bui-Nguyen coming up from behind his father and grabbing him by the neck, according to court documents.

The two struggled for 10 minutes until Bui lay “lifeless” on the ground, at which point Bui-Nguyen spent the next 70 minutes “violently beating” his father, according to court documents.

According to the Spokane County Medical Examiner’s office, Bui died from “manual strangulation and crush injury of the larynx.” The office ruled the manner of death a homicide.

Deputies were able to locate Bui-Nguyen by entering the stolen truck into a state database, which flagged the vehicle in Seattle. Bui-Nguyen was stopped by a Seattle Police officer who said Bui-Nguyen had been “acting suspiciously” and asking what was the “fastest way out of Seattle” after telling the officer he had been in an altercation with his father.

According to court documents, the officer referred him to the airport since he hadn’t apparently committed a crime. Spokane County Sheriff’s deputies contacted the Seattle Police Department’s Homicide unit to try to find Bui-Nguyen and arrest him.

Seattle police arrested Bui-Nguyen near his truck at about 4:30 p.m. Tuesday in downtown Seattle. According to court documents, he confessed to killing his father to detectives.

Bui-Nguyen has several arrests on his record, including one on Nov. 7, when Spokane Police were called to a Starbucks on Division Street where a disruptive Bui-Nguyen was acting strangely and refused to leave. According to court records, he made “several statements that there were people trying to kill him and he didn’t feel safe.”