Lam Ngoc Tran: Texas man sentenced to 40 years for killing wife with nail gun after she filed for divorce
HARRIS COUNTY, TEXAS: A Texas man, who killed his wife months after she filed for divorce, has been sentenced. The killing took place at their home on Peralta Springs Lane in Cypress, Texas, on January 10, 2022.
Lam Ngoc Tran pleaded guilty to one count of murder in May as he tried to kill himself later in a failed suicide attempt. The convict used a nail gun in their home as a weapon for the murder.
On Thursday, September 7, Harris County District Court Judge Veronica M Nelson ordered Tran to serve 40 years in prison for murdering My Thai Dang, 49.
What did the prosecutor say to the court about the killing?
“This is a horrible murder, and it reinforces that the most dangerous time for a battered spouse is when they are trying to leave the relationship,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said in court.
“This woman was trying to get away from an abusive husband, and the only reason she is dead is because he could not stand to lose control of her," Ogg said.
What did Dang tell her daughter before being killed?
Tran’s daughter informed police during an interview that on January 9, 2022, her father had sent her and other two children a text message saying “he was going somewhere, they wouldn’t be able to contact him, that if they needed anything to contact their uncle, and goodbye,” as per court affidavit.
She told police that Dang called her before the incident and told her that Train said he planned to “drag out the divorce process for as long as possible” because “she was not going to divorce him.”
Domestic violence turned fatal after she applied for divorce
As per Assistant District Attorney Matthew Magill, Dang is a Vietnam native who emigrated to Minnesota before moving to Houston to marry Tran.
Both of them worked at a plant that manufacturing HVAC equipment.
"They had been married six or seven years and things had escalated into a cycle of domestic violence," Magill said.
"They were scheduled for a hearing for a protective order the very next day, and his response was that if he couldn’t be with her, no one would," Magill added, reports Fox News.
DA office, in a statement, said that Harris County deputies responded to a 911 call at the couple's home and found Dang lying in a pool of her own blood.
She was believed to have been attacked with a heavy pneumatic nail gun. Dang was pronounced dead at the scene.