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Anaheim woman charged with felony animal cruelty after allegedly killing puppy by driving her van over it

Sean Emery, The Orange County Register on

Published in News & Features

ANAHEIM, Calif. — A 75-year-old Anaheim woman is facing felony animal cruelty and abuse charges after prosecutors allege she used dog food to lure her 9-month-old puppy under her van and then ran over and killed the pup.

Hanh Minh Nguyen is also facing a felony enhancement for using her vehicle as a weapon to kill Blackey, her black and white pit bull mix, an alleged animal killing that was caught on surveillance video.

Nguyen has not yet entered a plea, and it was unclear from court records whether she has hired or been appointed an attorney.

After her arrest, Nguyen was released on $20,000 bail, prosecutors say. She is scheduled to appear in court in early November.

At around 9 a.m. on Sept. 8, animal services officers responded to reports of a dead puppy in Santa Ana that appeared to have been run over. They found the dog’s head crushed, and dog food on the street near where it appeared the puppy had been run over, according to an Orange County District Attorney’s Office statement.

Prosecutors say surveillance footage from a nearby home showed Nguyen take the puppy out of her green Honda Odyssey minivan before placing it under the vehicle.

Nguyen placed dog food near her driver’s side door, prosecutors said, then moved the minivan forward slowly as the puppy approached the food. Nguyen drove over the puppy’s head with the minivan’s rear tire before driving off, prosecutors added.

Automated license plate reader technology identified the minivan from the video footage and led investigators to Nguyen, prosecutors said.

Santa Ana police officers found the minivan in Nguyen’s garage on Oct. 1 and arrested her. She admitted to owning and abandoning the dog, police previously alleged, but did not acknowledge purposely running over the puppy.

 

Police previously said that Nguyen’s boyfriend was annoyed at the puppy for chewing his shoes, leading Nguyen to allegedly decide to abandon the dog at a park. The boyfriend told police that Nguyen told him the dog had been run over, police previously said. But the boyfriend allegedly added that Nguyen didn’t tell him that she had run over the dog, and he was apparently surprised when she was arrested.

“This act of violence not only ended the life of an innocent puppy, but it also inflicted trauma on every single person who came across the video footage of the murder of an animal,” Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in a statement. “Violence is not a singular act. It inflicts pain and suffering on those who are subjected to it and on those who witness it…

“As the elected District Attorney of Orange County, I refuse to accept a society in which violence of any kind is acceptable, and those who engage in violence, whether it is against human beings or animals, will be prosecuted to the fullest extent,” Spitzer added.

The charges against Nguyen represent the latest in several recent high-profile animal cruelty cases in Orange County.

In July, Irvine dog trainer Kwong “Tony” Chun Sit was sentenced to 11 years and 10 months behind bars for the deaths of 11 dogs in his care, while a woman he worked with, Tingeng Liu, received three years for helping Sit try to dispose of the bodies of the dogs.

Weeks later, Priscilla Martin — a 33-year-old homeless woman who claimed to run an animal rescue operation — was arrested after more than a dozen dogs were rescued from her locked, sun-baked car in Newport Beach on the Fourth of July. Martin has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

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