A 21-year-old college student helped her mother escape her abusive husband and paid the ultimate price.
University of Washington student Angelina Tran was sleeping in her room on August 7, when she was awoken by a brutal argument between her mother Linh Ngoc Tran, 50, and stepfather, Nghiep Kein Chau, 54.
Chau reportedly struck Linh in the face and head 15 times, before Angelina intervened. She held her stepfather back while her mother escaped downstairs.
According to court documents, Chau then punched Angelina and wrestled her down to the kitchen floor.
He grabbed a “large” knife and repeatedly stabbed her in the chest with it, wile Linh hid in a room within the home and called 911.
Astonishingly, Chau paused the attack to change his clothes because he was cold from being wet with his stepdaughter’s blood, then grabbed a meat cleaver to continue the attack, which resulted in Angelina’s death by 107 stab wounds.
When first responders arrived, he ambled down the stairs with the bloody knife, and told police that he had killed the engineering student.
He told authorities that the argument began when he thought that his wife of 20 years was going to leave him and take all of his money with her.
“This murder appeared to be the result of anger at his stepdaughter for intervening in the defendant’s attack on her mother,” court documents stated.
“Angelina Tran’s intervention allowed her mother to escape and hide in a nearby bedroom, but the defendant did not stop his attack.”
Chau was taken into police custody and is being held on a $5 million bond, until he will be arraigned for first-degree murder and first-degree attempted murder at the end of the month.
A GoFundMe page created in Tran’s memory, which will benefit the National Asian Pacific Center on Aging, has nearly raised $30,000.
The beneficiary was chosen because Angelina “possessed a deep love and compassion for the elderly, and she held a strong desire to support them in any way she could.”
Her friends, who chose the charity based on her mother’s suggestion, said that Angelina “spent years of her life dedicated to improving the lives of the elderly through volunteer work.”
