TRAGEDY: Vietnamese Community Mass Killing in Edmonton, Alberta - Canada

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• published: 31 Dec 2014
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LATEST: Canadian mass killer spared two babies. Edmonton police release names of all eight of Phu Lam’s victims Phu Lam, who killed eight people including 2 other children, dropped off two infants with relatives before murdering his final victim and shooting himself (The Guardian) A man who killed eight people in the Canadian city of Edmonton this week spared two babies whom he dropped off with relatives before killing his last victim and turning the murder weapon on himself, police have said. Phu Lam, 53, shot dead five adults and two children, aged eight and three, on Monday in a house that he co-owned with his estranged wife, who was one of the victims, along with her parents, sister and a family acquaintance. He also killed another woman in a different house in Edmonton before driving to a town 19 miles northeast of the city, where he shot himself in a Vietnamese restaurant. Police said that Lam on Monday had dropped an eight-month-old girl, a niece of his wife, Thuy Tien Truong, whom he had already killed, and their one-year-old son with a relative in Edmonton before shooting the eighth victim, Cyndi Duong, later that day. “There’s a very good possibility that those children were in the house … when the homicides took place,” Supt Mark Neufeld of the Edmonton police said at a press conference. “And, yes, for whatever reason, the children were spared.” The murder-suicide made the mass killing the deadliest in the history of the city. There were 27 homicides in Edmonton in 2013 and 27 in 2014 prior to the killings. The city has a population of 878,000. All the victims were members of the city’s Vietnamese community. While the police said the killings were a deliberate and planned act, they said Duong was simply in the wrong place when Lam arrived looking for another person, whom they did not name. As police released results of autopsies that confirmed all the victims and Lam died of wounds from his stolen 9mm handgun, details emerged about the rocky relationship between Lam and his wife. CBC News said his wife, Truong, asked an Alberta court for an emergency protection order in November 2012 when Lam threatened to kill her and her family upon learning that Elvis Lam was not his son. Elvis, eight, was among the victims. The order was granted but was not renewed when it expired in January 2013. The other child killed, three-year-old Valentina Nguyen, was the daughter of Truong’s 33-year-old sister, Thanh Ha Thi Truong. The news service also said Lam was having financial difficulties, filing for bankruptcy last February after running up a debt of nearly C$500,000 (£277,000). (CityNews.ca) Police have identified the eight people who were gunned down in Edmonton earlier this week by a man who then killed himself. They say Phu Lam shot his wife, his son and his niece, along with four others, at a home on the north side. Investigators believe the 53-year-old man then drove to a south-end home and shot another woman dead. Court documents show Lam’s wife (Thuy-Tien Truong) testified in 2012 that he planned to kill her and her family but wasn’t able to buy a gun. She told court her husband grew upset when he found out their son was not his biological child. An emergency protection order was granted but revoked two months later. 'The family had trouble, problems': What we know about the victims and crime scenes. Edmonton Mass Murder 2014. (Edmonton Journal) A Vietnamese family with three children live at 1608 Haswell Court, the first scene touched by tragedy Monday night. Canada Mass Shooting 2014 Police say Cyndi Duong, 37, was shot in the home. It’s unclear what ties her to the suspect and the other crime scenes. Duong and her husband, David Luu, had three children ages six to 13. According to neighbours, a grandmother also lived at the house — government documents list a 59-year-old woman, Huong Lam, as a resident at the home. The two-storey house is on a quiet cul-de-sac in the Haddow neighbourhood of southwest Edmonton. It backs onto a stormwater pond. Luu and Duong took out a mortgage in June 2009 for $655,000. Minraj Chawla, 12, said he played street hockey all summer with the couple’s oldest son. He and his mother Dimple Chawla, said they didn’t know when the family moved to Canada, but only the grandmother struggled with English. video footage caught on tape cellphone camera surveillance raw dash cam