Jul 28, 2011
Source: News-record
Last week’s triple homicide case became more complicated when police charged three men with the murders for allegedly “acting in concert” with suspected gunman Hoanh Rcom.
Only one weapon was used in the shooting deaths of Joshua Prago, H’Ding Nie and Jason Rcom and wounding of Hli Nie and a 12-year-old girl. But police say Ayun Yy, Polly Rcom and Fnu Angu met Hoanh Rcom at the apartment complex where Hli Nie lived with “the intent to commit a felony assault on those victims.” Under the felony murder rule in state law, that subjects them to the same murder charge lodged against Hoanh Rcom.
The crimes are related to domestic violence. Hoanh Rcom and Hli Nie had been in a long-term relationship and were the parents of two children, including 6-year-old Jason Rcom. She ended the relationship and tried to stay away from him. He allegedly threatened her. Police responded to calls about his threats on June 30 and July 2. He surrendered two handguns on the first occasion and a third on the second.
She obtained a protective order against him on July 7. She made many of the right moves — except she did not call police again when she received a final alleged threat from him a short time before the shootings.
The documented threats and witnesses’ accounts could lead to a straightforward prosecution of Hoanh Rcom. But it’s an unusual development in a domestic violence case to have others also charged in the crimes.
To win murder convictions against those others, prosecutors must prove they were present at the scene where the crimes occurred and “acted together” with the actual killer, said Jeffrey B. Welty, an assistant law professor at the UNC School of Government and primary author of the North Carolina Criminal Law blog. They would had to have been “close enough to render assistance if needed.”
Making peripheral participants fully culpable in murder cases is “a valid legal theory,” Welty added.
Yet, police have not spelled out the extent of the three co-defendants’ participation, telling reporters at a press conference Monday that revealing more information could jeopardize further investigations and the prosecution. However, it will be important for police to demonstrate soon that such serious charges are based on solid evidence.
This tragedy has hit Greensboro’s Montagnard population very hard. All of the victims except Prago, and the four men accused belong to the close-knit community. Y Hin Nie, pastor of United Montagnard Christian Church in Greensboro, expressed shock and sorrow in a letter to the News & Record printed today and asked readers to “not forsake the Montagnards.” “This has never before happened among the Montagnard family in Vietnam or here in America.”
The differences in culture and language also complicate this case, said Greensboro police Officer Hien Nguyen, who is Vietnamese but not a Montagnard. Nguyen, who is working as a translator for investigators, said local Montagnards “are very sad” about these terrible events.
They have that in common with so many other city residents.
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