SMCĐ, 19/4/2012 (Cảm ơn thân hữu PBT)
Theo bài báo của ký giả Pete Carey đăng trên nhật báo San Jose Mercury News phát hành ngày Thứ Năm 19/4/2012 cho biết nạn nhân trong vụ thảm sát một gia đình người Việt tại San Jose tuần vừa qua là Bà Emma Nguyễn (tên đầy đủ là Emanuel Trần Phương Nguyễn) từng là chủ nhân điều hành một Night Club có tên là The Abyss tại Sunnyvale từ năm 2005 đến 2009, và đồng thời cũng là chủ nhân ngôi nhà "bạc triệu" trên đồi Evergreen Foothills bị ngân hàng tịch thu bán đấu giá (Foreclosure) sau hơn hai năm không trả tiền Mortgage.
Nhưng Bà Emma Nguyễn lại cho hơn 10 gia đình thuê lại mà người thuê nhà (hơn 1/2 là người bị bệnh và thất nghiệp) không biết rằng căn nhà này đã bị "foreclosure". Chỉ đến khi hệ thống nước trong nhà bị hư hỏng, người thuê nhà gọi điện thoại lên "San Jose's code enforcement division" để khiếu nại, thì lúc đó họ mới biết là căn nhà này đang ở trong tình trạng "foreclosure".
Sau đó chủ nhân thực sự của ngôi nhà là Bank of America đã phải trả cho 9 người thuê nhà, mỗi người là $1,500 để họ dọn nhà ra đi thuê chỗ khác.
Còn về Ô. Nguyễn Quốc Trung, 32 tuổi, cựu nhân viên hãng IBM, người đã bắn chết Bà Emma Nguyễn và sau đó quay súng tự sát, để lại một em bé 17 tháng tuổi trong xe, theo các nguồn tin thông thạo từ các quán cà phê cho biết Ô. Nguyễn Quốc Trung là con trai duy nhất của một gia đình với hai em gái. Thân phụ Ông Trung là một cựu quân nhân QLVNCH, thuộc binh chủng Không Quân, hiện đang sinh sống tại San Jose.
Xin gửi đến quý vị hai bài báo của ký giả Pete Carey liên quan đến vụ án mạng mới xảy ra.
San Jose murder-suicide victim once ran popular Sunnyvale Nightclub Abyss
By Pete Carey (
Posted: 04/18/2012 06:12:03 PM PDT; Updated: 04/19/2012 06:02:51 AM PDT
Emanuel "Emma" Nguyen had several setbacks recently, but nothing to foreshadow her slaying in broad daylight by the father of her young daughter.
Nguyen, 39, was shot at point-blank range Saturday morning in a San Jose shopping center parking lot by her former boyfriend with whom she was having a contentious child-custody dispute. Nguyen's ex-boyfriend, former IBM worker Trung Nguyen, then turned the gun on himself. Their bodies were found in a parking lot at the Gould Center near McLaughlin Avenue and East Capitol Expressway.
Police are still investigating the motive for the slaying, which they describe as a murder-suicide, and have released few details other than the names and ages of the two. Santa Clara County Child Protective Services took custody of the child, who was left strapped in a car seat.
But Emma Nguyen's friends, who confirmed her death, say she was the former owner of a million-dollar San Jose foothills home that was the subject of news reports after she rented rooms in it even though she had lost it to foreclosure. For someone proud of her achievements as an immigrant woman, losing her house was the latest in a string of setbacks that began with the closing of her popular Sunnyvale nightclub.
Friends say Nguyen was worried her daughter's father would use the furor over her former home against her in the custody battle, in which she said he was seeking full custody, but she never expressed fears for her safety.
"She wasn't afraid at all," said Lisa Jimenez, who ran the bar at Nguyen's nightclub, The Abyss, from 2005 until it closed in 2009. "She was one of the toughest females I've ever met. I'm shocked at her ex-boyfriend. I did meet him, went out to dinner, hung out with him. He seemed like a decent enough guy. I don't know what pushed him to do such a thing."
"She never mentioned she was worried for her life or anything," said Michael Nguyen, a close friend who managed the The Abyss. "To be honest, I haven't heard anything bad said about him at all."
(None of the Nguyens in this story is related; Nguyen is a very common Vietnamese name).
Michael Nguyen said Emma Nguyen rented a room in San Jose but had moved to Westminster in Southern California. He said Nguyen was at the shopping center where the shooting occurred for a weekly "baby exchange" with the father. She had flown back to San Jose with the child the day before.
Emma Nguyen arrived in San Jose in 2004 from New Jersey. She opened The Abyss the following year.
A hit with young Asians, the club made Nguyen wealthy enough to buy a $1.5 million house in the Evergreen Valley District of San Jose in 2005.
"We could make a movie out of my life," Nguyen told this newspaper several weeks ago in a telephone conversation about her foreclosure problem. "I am a small Hollywood star in San Jose because of the club. Among Asians, everybody knows me."
Nguyen was proud of her success despite the obstacles that face immigrants and women in business.
"I came here at the age of 14, and I turned into a millionaire," she said. Her nightclub could hold 950 people, she said.
There were parties, lots of friends. "Man, back then it was happening," she said.
Then one setback after another dimmed her fortunes. The first was a liquor license suspension in 2009; that was followed by the loss of her city permit to operate The Abyss. Too many fights and disputes at the club, the city staff said in a lengthy report recommending its closure.
Nguyen said in an interview that the club was "my main source of income. I was making a million with it."
The loss of the club was "devastating," said Jimenez, who rented a room in Nguyen's Evergreen Valley home for the past seven months.
Without that income, Nguyen faced financial difficulty. She divided her living room in half and rented it as two apartments to help meet payments on her mortgage. She rented other rooms to friends and professionals in the Vietnamese community.
"I felt pretty hurt, with a new baby on the way," she said. "The house was 4,300 square feet. How can my baby and I live in all these rooms?"
But an attempt to modify her loan fell through, followed by foreclosure in November.
Nguyen moved out of her former home in October along with most of the tenants but continued to rent out rooms, advertising them on Craigs-list, even though it was now owned by the bank. Some new tenants who moved in discovered they faced eviction and sought help from the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley.
Trung Nguyen, Nguyen's former boyfriend, added the foreclosure fiasco to the other allegations he had made against her in family court, according to a lawyer who knew Nguyen.
"She was really concerned," said Warren Nguyen, a real estate lawyer who helped her with an eviction proceeding. She was basically running around getting help wherever she could."
Friends said a hearing was scheduled some time this month.
Contact Pete Carey at 408-920-5419
Tin liên quan:
- Hai người Việt bị chết qua vụ giết người – rồi tự sát ở thành phố San Jose vào cuối tuần qua
- Mua nhà bạc triệu trên đồi Evergreen Foothills, bỏ cho nhà bank kéo, vẫn cho hơn 10 gia đình mướn
