Suspect in Fountain Valley arson, fatal crash could face murder for exchange student’s death

A Huntington Beach man who allegedly started a fire outside a Fountain Valley apartment Monday — touching off a police pursuit that ended in a fatal collision — has been booked into jail on suspicion of arson, murder and evading police.

Timothy Bradford Cole, 43, was hospitalized with serious injuries, after his Dodge Ram smashed into a white BMW at Ellis Avenue and Magnolia Street Monday night as he fled from officers, Fountain Valley police reported Tuesday.

Three female occupants of the BMW were also transported to a nearby trauma center, but one of them — 25-year-old Hong Ngoc Nguyen, a foreign exchange student from Vietnam — died from her injuries while en route, according to a FVPD release issued Wednesday.

The two other occupants of the vehicle, described as women in their 20s, were released from the hospital Wednesday and are back home in Huntington Beach recuperating from serious injuries sustained in the crash, the release stated.

All three victims grew up in Vietnam and have been friends since middle school, police reported, though it is unclear whether Nguyen was officially residing in Huntington Beach at the time of her death.

Cole, who was being held Wednesday evening in an intake facility, according to an online prison inmate locator maintained by the sheriff’s department, could face charges for murder, arson and eluding a peace officer resulting in the death of another person.

Police believe the suspect was engaged in a domestic dispute shortly after 10 p.m. Monday, when he allegedly doused a bush adjacent to a residence on the 18000 block of Arches Court with lighter fluid and lit it on fire, before fleeing the scene, police reported Tuesday.

Officers located Cole’s truck in a parking lot on the 17900 block of Brookhurst Street in Fountain Valley and initiated a pursuit. The chase ended in the deadly collision at the intersection of Ellis and Magnolia.