Traffic Stop Ends in Jail for Man Sought in Garden Grove Killing

A decade ago, community activists cradled Tu Anh Tran as a cause celebre. Even when he pleaded guilty to manslaughter after a friend’s death in a restaurant fight, they said the aspiring soccer coach was prosecuted only because police wrongfully assumed he was a gang member.

Now, Tran is behind bars again -- accused of murder in Garden Grove. But police agencies also believe he is a high-level gang member who jetted across the globe making drug deals and leaving mayhem in his wake.

He is suspected by Interpol of fatally stabbing a patron outside a Paris cafe and thought by Garden Grove police and other agencies to have engaged in violent activity in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties over the years.

On Friday, he was in Orange County Superior Court facing charges of murder and accessory to murder in the fatal shooting of a Garden Grove restaurant customer in 1996.

Police said Tran had been on the run since then.

Over the years, his alleged activities created an international manhunt, a search that ended April 30 when a San Gabriel police officer picked him up on suspicion of drunk driving.

Tran, 32, is being held without bail. His arraignment was scheduled for May 19.

His attorney, Celeste M. Mulrooney, declined to comment Friday about the case.

Tran’s longtime girlfriend, Nicoletta Tangavelou, 26, of Los Angeles was also arrested April 30 and is being held in lieu of $1 million bail on suspicion of harboring him and helping him avoid arrest, police said.

Tran’s current prosecution is tied to a shooting that left one man dead and a second injured in July 1996 in the parking lot of the Quan Triky Restaurant. Nhan Minh Tran, 26, of Huntington Beach died of a chest wound. Hiep Chau, now 33, a Chicago resident who was visiting Orange County, recovered from gunshot wounds to the arm, leg and torso.

At the time, police said the men had given each other hard looks inside the restaurant, then began arguing in the parking lot. Two other men -- Duy Quang Pham, 29, and Binh Quoc Luong, 42 -- were convicted in the shooting.

Garden Grove police have worked with the FBI, Interpol and Paris police to track Tran’s activities. Garden Grove police say Tran was heavily involved in narcotics trafficking between the United States and Taiwan, but declined to comment specifically on the other allegations of violent activities.

In 1994, Tran was a few months shy of getting his associate of arts degree from Rancho Santiago College in Santa Ana when he went out with a friend to a Westminster restaurant.

The friend was fatally shot after a scuffle in which an off-duty security guard said the pair were part of a group that had demanded his pistol, then beat him with a tire iron.

The guard opened fire in self-defense, and Kinh Van Chu, 37, was killed.

Tran was prosecuted through a Penal Code section law that says that anyone whose actions provoke a murder bears responsibility for the death. He denied joining the fight.

Although he insisted he was innocent, Tran pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter to avoid jail time and was sentenced to three years’ probation.