Opinion ID: 2640351
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Murder of Thien Minh Ly

Text: Defendant concedes that the prosecution proved he murdered Ly on the Tustin High School tennis courts on January 28, 1996. The evidence showed that on January 28, 1996, between 8:30 and 9:00 p.m., Thien Minh Ly left his family's home in Tustin wearing his Rollerblades and leaving behind his wallet and car keys. When Ly did not return home, his family telephoned the police the next day. On the same morning, around 7:45 a.m., Frank Armenta, a groundskeeper at Tustin High School, noticed someone wearing Rollerblades lying on one of the tennis courts. As he approached, Armenta noticed the person was not breathing and saw blood on his shirt and a cut on his neck. He asked two nearby school employees to call the police. When the police responded, they found Ly dead. Next to Ly's body, they recovered a cap and a single key on a keyring. The key fit the locks at Ly's residence. Ly had suffered multiple injuries. A pattern contusion (i.e., having some pattern like linear marking) and abrasion comprising an area about five inches by four inches appeared on the right side of Ly's face, extending from his forehead to his right cheek and ear. A contusion and an abrasion appeared on the left side of Ly's forehead, and a contusion appeared on his mid-nose area and below his left eye. Redness was visible on his left cheek. Ly had suffered five-and-a-half-inch and three-and-a-half-inch slash wounds on the right and left sides of his neck, respectively. Each of these wounds had irregular edges, suggesting the perpetrator did not inflict a single wound, but probably cut and then extended the cut. The slash wounds to Ly's neck had been inflicted close in time to his death but not postmortem. Ly had suffered multiple deep stab wounds on the right and left sides of his chest that penetrated his internal organs, linear abraded areas that were consistent with being caused by the pulling of a knife from a deep penetrating wound, stab wounds on his right upper arm, a stab wound in his abdominal area, and an abrasion on his right hand. Some of the chest wounds penetrated through the body. Ly had suffered about 22 wounds to his chest and abdominal areas, some inflicted from the front and some from the back. Each wound had been inflicted by a single-bladed knife or sharp object with a blade about an inch to an inch and a quarter in width. The maximum depth of penetration was about four and one-half inches. Ly had been stabbed about 14 times in the heart. The multiple stab wounds that perforated Ly's heart, both lungs, diaphragm, liver, duodenum, and kidney had caused Ly to bleed to death.