A 27-year-old Seattle man told Kent detectives he shot and killed a Tukwila man because the man decided to go to bed and refused to stay up and drink alcohol with him.
King County prosecutors charged Quang Ngoc Dinh on Thursday with first-degree murder for allegedly shooting the 39-year-old Tukwila man at about 1:50 a.m. on Sunday at a house in the 500 block of Fourth Avenue South. The identity of the man has yet to be released by the King County Medical Examiner’s Office. Dinh also faces a first-degree assault charge for shooting and injuring a woman at the house.
Dinh is scheduled to be arraigned on Sept. 19 at the Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent. He remains in custody at the county jail in Kent with bail set at $1 million.
Dinh told detectives he became angry after the man refused to keep drinking alcohol with him, so he went out to his car to get his handgun, according to charging papers. He returned to the back door of the home and shot the man through the open door.
The Tukwila man was one of about eight people drinking alcohol and eating at the house, where his girlfriend lives. The girlfriend told police that her boyfriend and Dinh got in an argument about her boyfriend wanting to go to bed but Dinh wanted him to stay up and drink more. She said earlier in the night Dinh even kicked in the bedroom door and threatened her boyfriend with a kitchen knife if he did not come back out and keep drinking.
The woman told police that several people tried to break up the argument and got Dinh outside to his parked car so he could leave with his wife and two small children to go home. She even heard his wife yell out, “Stop, stop!” Immediately afterward, the woman heard two loud bangs. She looked to the back door of the house and saw her boyfriend had been shot in the forehead and fell to the ground.
The woman then saw Dinh holding a handgun as he entered the home and stood over her boyfriend. She ran out of the house and down the street to a neighbor’s house to call for help.
Police arrived and arrested Dinh outside the home.
“I was waiting for you guys out here,” Dinh told the officers.
Police searched Dinh and found a handgun on his waistband and two fully loaded additional ammunition magazines in his pocket. He had blood on his shirt and pants.
The woman who was shot ran to a nearby fire station for help. Paramedics transported her to Valley Medical Center in Renton for treatment for a non-life threatening wound to the head.
Steven A. Herschkowitz, a senior deputy prosecuting attorney, asked in charging documents for the high bail because he wrote that Dinh poses a significant threat to the safety of the community and is a flight risk as he has ties to outside of the country.
“While the defendant does not have any known criminal history, the incredibly violent nature of this offense warrants high bail,” Herschkowitz wrote. “Additionally, according to the defendant’s own statement he has been in the country for only four years and has ties to Vietnam and is thus, a flight risk.”
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