The arraignment of a 73-year-old man accused of killing his 10-year-old stepdaughter and shooting and stabbing his wife was rescheduled again Tuesday.
Tanh Thien Tran was to have been arraigned last Thursday and then on Friday on charges of murder and attempted murder, but remained hospitalized for treatment of what police said were self-inflicted stab wounds.
Officers responded about 6:30 a.m. last Wednesday to a domestic violence call in the 8900 block of Blossom Avenue and discovered Tran's 36-year-old wife in the front yard with stab wounds and a single gunshot wound, Garden Grove police Lt. Carl Whitney said. The woman told officers the family lived in a duplex and her husband was in the rear of the home, he said.
"She also told us three children were still in the house,'' Whitney said.
Her sons, aged 3 and 6, were found unharmed in the residence. Tran is the father of the youngest child.
Officers found Tran, armed with a knife, on the "threshold of the patio door,'' suffering from "superficial self-inflicted wounds,'' according to the lieutenant.
While Tran was talking to the officers in the rear of the home, other officers found the 10-year-old girl and the two boys inside the home and took them outside.
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Officers tried to resuscitate the girl, who was taken with her mother to UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange, where the youngster was pronounced dead 90 minutes later, Whitney said. Her mother survived.
Officers eventually subdued Tran with rubber bullets and bean bag rounds, he said.
Whitney said the couple had been having domestic troubles, but no specific motive for the outbreak of violence was disclosed. Tran had brought the woman to the United States from Vietnam.
"One of our sergeants went out there to talk to school personnel and the principal became really emotional when he heard the news,'' Whitney said.
The girl was "really popular at school and really well-liked.''
