{"id":11460,"date":"2026-06-01T23:01:40","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T23:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=11460"},"modified":"2026-06-01T23:01:40","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T23:01:40","slug":"man-81-who-killed-stepdaughter-11-and-attacked-wife-in-garden-grove-gets-life-sentence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=11460","title":{"rendered":"Man, 81, who killed stepdaughter, 11, and attacked wife in Garden Grove gets life sentence"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

An 81-year-old man who stabbed his 11-year-old stepdaughter to death while trying to kill his wife during a bloody attack in their Garden Grove home was sentenced Monday, June 1, to 37 years to life in prison.<\/p>\n

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An Orange County Superior Court jury in April found Tanh Thien Tran guilty of first-degree murder for killing Anh Duong and attempting to murder her mother, San Nguyen.<\/p>\n

In a Santa Ana courtroom, Orange County Superior Court Judge Lewis W. Clapp said he saw Tran as someone who was \u201cunable to control his emotions.\u201d The judge said it was unclear if that was due to the medication Tran had been on at the time of the attack, or perhaps he had been run down by life.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole thing was tragic,\u201d Clapp said.<\/p>\n

San Nguyen screamed for help as she ran out of their home in the 8900 block of Blossom Avenue on the morning of Aug. 29, 2018. Police quickly got the mortally injured girl \u2014 as well as her uninjured 3- and 6-year-old brothers \u2014 out of the home.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad tried to kill me,\u201d the dying girl told police and paramedics as they tended to her on the home\u2019s lawn. She had been stabbed by a knife that pierced the left side of her abdomen. A prosecutor later told jurors that the girl \u201cliterally gave her life trying to save her mother\u2019s life.\u201d<\/p>\n

A police standoff with Tran \u2014 when he made what were believed to be failed attempts to take his own life \u2014 ended with Tran\u2019s arrest a short time later.<\/p>\n

Tran met Nguyen \u2014 nearly 40 years younger than him \u2014 while he was in Vietnam. The two dated, married in 2016 and Nguyen moved from Vietnam with her three children to Orange County to live with Tran.<\/p>\n

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\n<\/div>\n

Tran, who was receiving retirement benefits, stayed home and watched the children while Nguyen worked.<\/p>\n

According to the prosecution, Tran came to believe that Nguyen was cheating on him after seeing what appeared to be \u201cflirty\u201d or \u201cromantic\u201d texts to another man on her phone. His anger began \u201cpercolating, boiling up over time,\u201d the prosecution added during the trial.<\/p>\n

The night before the attack, Nguyen apparently told Tran that while she didn\u2019t plan to divorce him, she did want to find another place where she could live with the children.<\/p>\n

The next morning, while Nguyen was getting ready for work, Tran shot her in the arm with a BB gun and then forced her into a closest, where he stabbed her repeatedly with a knife.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

Hearing her mothers\u2019 cries, the 11-year-old apparently came to her aid.<\/p>\n

Tran grabbed the girl, according to prosecutors, threw her to the ground and straddled her as he kept trying to stab her mother. At some point, the girl was stabbed.<\/p>\n

The mother escaped the closet and the home.<\/p>\n

Before police took him into custody, Tran slit his wrists, cut his neck and poked the blade into his stomach, but all of the wounds were superficial.<\/p>\n

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“My dad tried to kill me,” the dying girl told first responders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11459,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-based-on-facts-either-observed-and-verified-directly-by-the-reporter-or-reported-and-verified-from-knowledgeable-sources","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nMan, 81, who killed stepdaughter, 11, and attacked wife in Garden Grove gets life sentence - Silicon Valley Moving Post<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=11460\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Man, 81, who killed stepdaughter, 11, and attacked wife in Garden Grove gets life sentence - 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