Robber in restaurant shooting lived in halfway house

Attorney remembers gunman as "respectful"

By Jeff Kass, James B. Meadow, Bill Scanlon

Originally published 01:57 p.m., November 14, 2007
Updated 09:20 p.m., November 15, 2007

Photo by Javier ManzanoJavier Manzano © The Rocky

Javier Manzano © The Rocky

A woman is escorted by two police officers near Ha Noi restaurant, 1036 S. Federal Blvd., as investigators survey the scene of a shooting Wednesday. Two plainclothes Denver police officers were having lunch when a gunman entered the restaurant.

Denver defense attorney Jeffrey A. Trujillo remembers his teenage client as a “very mild-mannered, nice kid” who was “respectful” when Trujillo visited him in jail.

And although Phuong V. Dang was in a violent street gang facing multiple felonies before he was old enough to vote, Trujillo was surprised to learn Thursday that Denver police shot his one-time client in the midst of what appears to be a botched armed robbery.

“He was 16 and he got a huge sentence,” Trujillo said Thursday of the 1998 case. “You’re just a child and you get sent to prison for the better part of your life, and you get another chance, and you fall back on your old ways.”

Now 26, Dang was wearing a bandanna over his mouth and nose Wednesday when he entered the Ha Noi Vietnamese restaurant on South Federal Boulevard shortly after noon, according to police. He pointed a black shotgun at restaurantgoers, and pushed a black duffle bag toward them.

Among the lunch crowd, however, was Denver police detective Jesse Avendano and Sgt. John Pinder. Dressed in plainclothes but on-duty, the officers exchanged gunfire with Dang, who is now in critical condition at Denver Health Medical Center.

One of the policemen and three others were also injured in the gunfire.

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[BODY]Dang was 16 when he was sent to the Buena Vista Correctional Facility for robbery, menacing and two counts of assault, said Katherine Sanguinetti, spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections.

After he was transferred to the Fremont Correctional Facility, time was tacked onto his sentence because he was found with contraband, she said.

He was at the prison in Sterling until October of last year when he was transferred to Correctional Management Inc.’s halfway house at 3955 Ulster St. in Denver.

Mike Koob, vice president of operations for CMI, said residents at the Ulster Street facility typically serve six to nine months before being let out on parole or transitioning to intensive supervised parole.

The residents are required to spend at least eight hours a day in the 60-bed capacity facility, but can sign out for work, treatment or community service, Koob said.

Pending new charges, Dang would have finished his sentence and mandatory parole time on Jan. 5, 2017.

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[BODY]Above at least six bullet holes in the plate-glass window, the orange and blue neon sign still flashed “Open”, but the yellow crime scene tape around the Ha Noi Restaurant indicated otherwise Thursday.

As Denver Police wound down the crime scene investigation that was projected to conclude by Thursday afternoon, Sang Tran stood in front of his tailor-cum-video rental shop, shoved his hands in his pockets, squinted into the noon sun and said, “It was scary, man, scary, y’know?”

Tran, whose shop is directly north of the Ha Noi, was trapped there for several hours after accused gunman Phuong V. Dang tried to rob it, only to find himself in a firefight with the two undercover police officers who were there for lunch.

“I couldn’t get out of my place until 3, y’know,” said Tran, a three-year occupant of the strip mall, who, like many of the Ha Noi’s business neighbors, was surprised by the carnage.

“It was the first time in my whole life I ever heard something so loud like that,” said Ramin Kamal, a clerk at Rosie’s Cigarettes Store. “At first I thought there was a car accident out there.”

But Kim Oanh Nguyen was under no such illusions. The stylist at Image Hair Design knew there was a shooting when a customer ran into her store and told her. With salon owner Thao Nguyen serving as her translator, Kim also remembered, how “Four people ran out of the restaurant and hid in the parking lot, ducking behind cars.”

When one of them came toward the shop, Kim asked him what happened and he told her, “A robber wearing a mask holding a long gun was standing in front of the restaurant.”

Still “shivering,” Nguyen recalled seeing the “robber laying down ... his pants were cut off and blood was running down his legs…but he still was wearing the ski mask.”

Nguyen recalled that even though the man lay face down, she thought he was Asian “because he wasn’t hairy” and “his tattoos looked Asian.”

Remembering the scene of the bloody man being carried away, she said, “I’m still afraid.”

Her boss said she didn’t know the restaurant owners that well, but that they were customers of her salon and she would often go to the restaurant to take out food. In her five years as owner of Image Hair, Thao Nguyen said there had never been any violence along the strip mall.

Thao Nguyen, who was not in her shop at the time, said, “It could have been any one of us - we have a back door, too. If he felt like coming in here, it could have been one of us shot.”

She added that “We have a security door and that will always stay locked from now.”

As she went back to attend to a customer, the owner that the shooting “was the talk topic of the day. It’ll probably the topic for a lot of days.”