Remember Tina Hoang, the prostitute-turned-mom who was apparently trying to turn her life around before her body was found on the sand next to lifeguard tower No. 71 near West Ocean Front and Highland Street in Newport Beach on March 4?
The county coroner has officially ruled the Bellflower 20-year-old's death a homicide.
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The Daily Pilot report on the finding does not indicate the manner of death, however. Newport Beach police investigators are still seeking clues and ask anyone with information to call Detective Garrett Fitzgerald at 949.644.3797. Anonymous tips can be directed to 800.550.NBPD.
A passerby noticed the corpse on the beach around 6 a.m. on a Monday morning and called police. Officers saw no visible signs of injury.
As reported here …
Newport Beach Police Seek Answers in “Suspicious Death” of Prostitute Tina Hoang
… Hoang split her time between the California and Florida Orange counties and racked up multiple prostitution-related arrests in both.
But one of her friend's maintained Hoang had found a new place to live and enrolled in community college after having a baby in January and deciding to put her life on the streets behind her. Hoang's Tustin lawyer, David Nisson, revealed his client had last been released from jail on Feb. 27.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.