Thread: Mother Dies After Saving Children From Home Invader Gunman

Wednesday, November 26, 2008 (SF Chronicle)
Mother, intruder killed in Peninsula home
Tyche Hendricks,Matthew B. Stannard, Chronicle Staff Writers


(11-25) 19:32 PST SAN MATEO -- As a gunman stormed the bedroom where she
had barricaded herself in a desperate bid for survival Tuesday, a young
San Mateo mother passed her two small children out the window to SWAT
officers.
Moments after saving their lives, 24-year-old Loan Kim Nguyen was mortally
wounded as the intruder and police exchanged gunfire. When officers
entered the home on Hobart Avenue, they found the man dead.
The tragedy shook the neighborhood of century-old homes near the heart of
the Peninsula city.
"We are shocked by this brazen and violent act," said Deputy Police Chief
Mike Callagy.
Police also said, however, that the intruder apparently had targeted the
home where Nguyen lived with her husband, 3-year-old son and 1-year-old
daughter, and they had some indication the crime was "not a random act."
But it was a mystery Tuesday night what had brought the still-unidentified
intruder to the home.
The incident began shortly after 9:30 a.m., when the California Highway
Patrol transferred a 911 call to San Mateo police. The caller said he had
just received a text message from his wife, who told him a gun-wielding
intruder was in their home at 29 Hobart Ave. and that she was being
robbed.
Officers who responded spotted a man inside the house with a handgun
beating a woman, Police Chief Susan Manheimer said. As officers approached
the house, yelling at the man to drop the gun, they heard a shot.
Unable to tell if the shot was fired at the woman or at police, and
reluctant to return fire for fear of harming the home's residents,
officers backed off and called for a SWAT team and hostage negotiators.
Ken Antrobus, a neighbor who was watching from across the street, said
several officers with guns drawn negotiated with the man.
"(They said) come to the front door, come out and no one will get hurt,"
Antrobus said.
The man refused to answer, Manheimer said. But at some point, Nguyen was
able to make contact with police, telling them she had barricaded herself
in a bedroom over the garage with her children.
"The mother indicated she was going to drop the children out a window of
the house in order to save their lives," Manheimer said. Meanwhile, the
gunman was trying to get into the bedroom.
"The victim in this case is nothing short of a hero for saving the lives
of her two small children from the crazed gunman," Manheimer said.
The SWAT team, composed of officers from eight Peninsula agencies, quickly
developed a plan. Several officers climbed onto the roof of a van, which
other officers then pulled into the driveway of the home, bringing the
vehicle under the barricaded mother's window.
As Nguyen began passing her children out the window, Manheimer said, the
intruder fired blindly through the walls of the bedroom. One officer
leaped from the roof of the van to the ground, bullets flying past him and
a baby in his arms.
"It was a great sight to see the officers running back with these two
young children crying and clinging to them," Manheimer said. The children
were not harmed.
As one child was borne to safety, officers returned fire at the intruder
and another team of police stormed the front of the house to create a
distraction. Nguyen handed the second child to an officer, then crumpled
to the floor of her bedroom, Manheimer said.
Police chased the intruder through the home, finding him in a back
bedroom, dead of at least one gunshot wound. Nguyen was taken to Stanford
Hospital, where she died.
It is not yet clear who fired the bullets that killed Nguyen or the
intruder, Manheimer said, although she also said police were not shooting
when Nguyen was hit.
"We don't have enough information to say at this point, and the worst
thing you can do in an investigation is make assumptions," she said. "I
can't say exactly which rounds hit whom."
She did say, however, that the intruder may have shot himself.
The shooting remains under investigation by police and the San Mateo
County district attorney's office.
The name of the dead intruder was not released by police. A neighbor,
Sharon Rottiers, said she saw officers searching a Toyota Camry parked
across the street from the residence. She saw them pulling clothing,
medication bottles, pliers, sheets and other items from the car, which she
said looked like somebody had been living in it.
Police said they believe the car was related to the case, but did not
elaborate.
The children were safe Tuesday night with their father, police said.
"We will not rest until we get to the bottom of this," Manheimer said. "In
the morning we thought it was a random robbery, but we now think it was
not. Signs point to that there might be some connection."
Property records show that Nguyen and her husband bought the home about a
year ago, and had recently offered it for sale for the same price at which
they bought it.
Neighbors said there had been several open houses recently. Photos of the
listing on real estate sites show a tidy home with modern furniture and a
baby's room, painted red with a wooden crib and a colorful mobile of birds
flying.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 14C53M.DTL

Has it been found that the intruder was an illegal immigrant?

What a tragedy. Glad to see the mother's paternal instincts kicked in and her children are safe as a result.

Investigators say stalker was responsible for San Mateo shooting
By Sean Webby and Jessica Bernstein-Wax


Bay Area News Group

Posted: 11/26/2008 12:51:40 PM PST


Click photo to enlarge
Loan Kim Nguyen, 24-year-old mother of two, who was shot to death on Nov. 25, 2008. (Family friend)«12345»
Read and sign
Guest book in memory of Loan Kim Nguyen
Loan Kim Nguyen was a 24-year-old mother of two, a former beauty contestant from the East Bay with a banker husband and ambitions of her own.

Raymond Gee, a 22-year-old mentally unstable man, investigators said, was from a hard part of East Oakland.

Investigators Wednesday revealed for the first time that they believe that obsession was a potential motive behind the brazen, bizarre crime that left the mother slain and the man dead by his own hand as SWAT members were closing in on him.

"We have confirmed that this was not a random attack, but rather an incident of stalking," San Mateo Police Chief Susan Manheimer said at a Wednesday afternoon news conference.

One of Nguyen's neighbors saw Gee near the home days before the shooting. Police said Gee — who has a history of weapons possession and was arrested for possession of a loaded weapon — had been using the Internet to pursue Nguyen for several weeks, but they refused to elaborate.

The stalking revelation came a day after Gee entered Nguyen's home. Investigators now believe he may have sneaked through a partially open garage door of the San Mateo home as Nguyen's husband left for work. Nguyen managed to text an alert to her husband and hand her two young children to arriving police officers just before being felled by what seems to be Gee's fatal gunshots. By the time police smashed their way inside, Gee, too, was dead from a single gunshot to the head.

Steve


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Wagstaffe, the county's chief deputy district attorney, said he remained in awe over Nguyen's selfless bravery and how police officers braved gunfire to rescue her 1-year-old girl and 3 year-old boy.

"There is no question in our mind that the children could have been victims if she hadn't handed them over to the officers,'' Wagstaffe said. "And the officers risked their lives."

Nguyen's house on Hobart Avenue, a quiet residential neighborhood off El Camino Real, was quiet Wednesday. The front door, which had been smashed in, was boarded up and the shattered window through which Nguyen lowered her crying children was protected from the rain by a garbage bag. On the steps were a half dozen bouquets of flowers, a candle and a typewritten letter from a neighbor expressing condolences. "She gave her life to save them,'' the letter said. "She died a hero."

Investigators, including those with the San Mateo County District Attorney's Office, used a ballistics expert to determine whether it was the suspect or one of the many officers at the scene who shot Nguyen. Preliminary results seem to show that she was shot by the assailant and he shot himself, according to police.

Friends described Nguyen as a kindhearted beauty pageant regular from Concord who was well-known in the local Vietnamese community. She was set to graduate with a bachelor's degree in communications from the University of the Pacific on Dec. 19.

Nguyen and husband Dennis Quan married about four years ago and moved to San Mateo, so they could be closer to his job as a loan officer at a Wachovia Bank branch in San Jose, friends said. But financial difficulties forced Nguyen to work part time for a company that manages nightclubs, said Janey Luu of San Jose, a close friend.

That work sometimes kept her out until 4 or 5 a.m. and was a cause of stress, Luu said.

"She would complain that it was tiring because she would rather be at home with the kids, but with the economy bad, they needed more than one income," Luu said. "Maybe somebody from the club was stalking her, but if they're in love with her, why would they try to beat and shoot her?"

Tuesday's violent outburst began just before 9:39 a.m. when a man called San Mateo police and told them that his wife had sent him a text message saying that she was being robbed at gunpoint inside their home, police said.

Officers went to the house and saw a man holding a handgun inside. He was assaulting Nguyen. Officers told him to drop the weapon and surrender. Police said he fired at the officers, narrowly missing them.

Nguyen barricaded herself in a bedroom with her two children. As she handed her children — who were unharmed — to the officers perched on top of a SWAT van, the gunman began shooting from an adjoining bathroom through a wall. Police fired back.

Just as the officers took the second child from the mother, she crumpled, struck with multiple gunshots. She died later at Stanford Hospital.

Police entered the house through the front door and chased the gunman into a back bedroom. There they found him dead.

Contact Sean Webby at swebby@mercurynews.com or (40 920-5003
http://www.mercurynews.com/lifestyle/ci_11081014

It is to bad she did not have a personal firearm safely stored in that bedroom. She might have stood a better chance. If this had happened at my home, the perpetrator would have faced a hail of lead coming through the door at him from within the bedroom.

W

People need to use their second amendment rights when it comes to things like this. Of course if Obama has his way, the second amendment will be gone soon.