What is most disturbing about home invasions is that the potential for serious violence is omnipresent, even under what seems to be risk-free circumstances. Sometimes what begins as a burglary can turn into an aggravated robbery when the would-be burglars are surprised by a homeowner or find someone in the house who is not supposed to be there.
Last December 13 -- a very unlucky 13 for a 17-year-old Vietnamese named Peter Tran -- a homeowner in northwest Harris County took a day off from his job so he could clean up his house after a burglary.
While he was straightening up the mess left behind by the thieves, he heard a noise in a back bedroom and went to investigate, first taking the precaution of arming himself with a pistol he kept in the house. He found Peter Tran ransacking the room. Without asking questions, the homeowner shot and killed Tran, then ran outside to confront his accomplices.
Alerted by the gunfire, three or four other youths -- the homeowner was not sure how many because of the confusion -- jumped in a yellow sedan, identified either as a BMW or a Mercedes, and fled. The homeowner emptied his pistol at the vehicle as it sped away but he was unsure if any of his shots connected. Police said at the time that it was the second home invasion of the day in Harris County.
Despite the existence of the task force and an ever-growing body of intelligence about local Asian gang operations, law enforcement officials still find themselves in a quandary about how to react to home invasions, either planned or actual.
"We can't let them do a home invasion ,period," Rizzo says emphatically. If officers know in advance about a home invasion plan they stop the criminals before they actually enter the house. But if police are called after the gang members are already inside, that poses a different kind of problem.
The most immediate solution is to act quickly and in force, as police did when Cuong Phu and his cohort forced their way into Choong Il Suh's home last year.
At 10 p.m. on April 10, a year and four days after the Cuong Phu incident, three Vietnamese youths forced their way into a house in the 12000 block of Barrett Brae, seizing a Vietnamese woman, Lai Tran, and her 11-year-old daughter. After stripping the house of everything they considered valuable, the youths forced Lai Tran to knock on the door of the house next door.
When the neighbor, 49-year-old Thom Nguyen, answered the knock, the youths forced their way into his house as well. Herding Nguyen and the five other adults in the house into the living room, they tied them up and forced them to the floor. Four children were awakened and taken into the living room as well but they were not bound. For the next hour, gang members took turns beating and kicking the captives while they tore the house apart looking for valuables.
The incident climaxed when a friend arrived to pick up one of the adults. When no one responded to her car horn, the woman walked up to the house and peeked through the window. Hurriedly taking in the situation, she ran back to her car, drove off, and called police.
A few minutes later officers arrived and surrounded the house. The youths apparently didn't know that police had been summoned until one of the officers used a bullhorn to call for their surrender.
One of the youths, unaware that police were at the back of the house as well as the front, broke out a window in a rear bedroom and tried to escape. He was shot and killed. The remaining two youths surrendered shortly before dawn and were charged with engaging in organized crime.
Ken Englade is the author of seven true crime books, including Beyond Reason and, most recently, Blood Sister.
