A Vietnamese man was convicted on Thursday of murdering four small children he threw from a 25m bridge on Alabama’s Gulf coast, a crime prosecutors described as a horrific “death ride” for youngsters who thought they were in caring hands.
Lam Luong, 38, who emigrated from Vietnam at 14, presented no defense witnesses at his trial this week.
A jury needed just 40 minutes to convict him of five counts of capital murder, one for each child and one extra because the case involves multiple victims. Capital murder is Alabama’s only charge that carries a potential death sentence.
Jurors are scheduled to return yesterday to recommend either death or life in prison without parole, though the judge is not required to abide by their recommendation.
Prosecutors told jurors Luong committed an “unimaginable crime” by casting the four children — ages four months to three years — from the highest point of the Dauphin Island bridge on Jan. 7 last year after an argument with his common-law wife, Kieu Phan. Three of the children were his with Phan, 23, and the fourth was his wife’s with another man.
Prosecution witnesses said they spotted Luong and the children in a van parked on the bridge that crosses the Mississippi Sound. One testified that he thought Luong was just tossing a bundle of garbage over the railing — only to learn later that bundle was the first child dropped into the water.
Assistant District Attorney Jo Beth Murphree, who led the prosecution, told jurors in closing arguments on Thursday that the children “did not know they were on a death ride that morning. They trusted him ... The father has betrayed his children.”
When parents kill their children, she said, “sometimes there is just evil. That’s what we have in this case.”
A tearful Phan declined to comment after the verdict as she left the courthouse escorted by relatives.
A part-time shrimper, Luong acknowledged killing the children in one statement while in custody, authorities said. But officials said he later recanted to police, reverting to his initial story that an Asian woman named Kim had taken the children.
He had entered a guilty plea at a hearing before the trial and said he wanted to die, but later retracted that plea.
Defense attorney Greg Hughes said Luong was intoxicated when he went to the bridge after a night of smoking crack cocaine and drinking alcohol.
The children’s’ mother testified on Monday that Luong had a girlfriend, used drugs and didn’t find a job when the family returned to the Alabama coast after temporarily relocating to Georgia after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast in 2005.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver