UPDATE, JUNE 5, 12:29 P.M.: During the trial, several family members testified for the 45-year-old woman with Down Syndrome kicked in the head and body by her roommate Richard Vu Nguyen. But the victim's caretaker and two of her relatives testified for Nguyen, according to a statement from the Orange County District Attorney's office. His girlfriend, Mai Do, told the court that despite watching video of the abuse, her initial feelings of
betrayal had subsided, the OCDA says.
]
Phuong Do, another relative of the abused woman, testified that she did not think the crime was serious after seeing the surveillance video, according to the OCDA statement.
Do apparently believed Nguyen kicked her relative in the head “to be funny.”
ORIGINAL POST, JUNE 5, 10:24 A.M.: Clear out that cabana in Hell, Richard Vu Nguyen's checking in.
A
jury Monday found the Garden Grove 45-year-old guilty of kicking the
head and body of his female roommate with Down Syndrome, and he now
faces an Aug. 17 sentencing hearing where he could draw a four-year
prison sentence.
Video evidence of the battering of the 45-year-old woman helped win the felony dependent adult abuse conviction
The woman's family suspected she was being abused, but her affliction prevented her from speaking verbally. Footage from a surveillance camera the family hid in her bedroom showed that some time
between March 31 and April 9, 2011, Nguyen came into the roommate's
room, jumped up on her bed and kicked her in the head and torso. He then
left.
Richard Vu Nguyen Faces Trial for On-Camera Beating of Roommate with Down Syndrome
Richard Vu Nguyen Accused of Beating Female Roommate with Down Syndrome
Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
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.