Youth Shot at Westminster Junior High School Dance

A teen-ager from Santa Ana was shot in the legs after five youths, thought to be gang members, tried to crash a Westminster junior high school graduation dance Thursday, police said.

Andy Thanh Pham, 16, who does not attend the school but told police that he was attending his brother’s graduation at Russell I. Johnson Junior High, was wounded while being chased by the youths in the school parking lot, Westminster Police Officer Tom Broderson said.

The five assailants then fled from the school in a white Cadillac and a red sedan, Broderson said. Investigators were interviewing students to determine the identity of the youths. But police and Principal Dale Bischof said they do not believe that the youths, described as being 15 to 16 years old, were students at the school.

Pham was treated at Humana Hospital in Westminster and released, hospital officials said. Broderson said investigators believe that a small-caliber bullet pierced one leg and then the other.

Westminster Police Detective Marcus Frank said that the assailants are thought to be Vietnamese gang members. If so, Frank, who is in charge of investigating crimes in the city’s Vietnamese community, said the incident would be the first such shooting involving Vietnamese gang members in Westminster.

Frank said investigators, who spent several hours Thursday interviewing students and adults who witnessed the incident, have not yet determined why the youths would have been at this particular junior high, trying to crash a school affair. He said he could only speculate why the youths would try to talk their way into a junior high school dance.

“They like to try and go pick up the girls,” he said. “For them, it’s probably a good place to do it.”

Johnson Junior High, located in the 13000 block of Edwards Street in Westminster, is a school for seventh- and eighth-graders. The shooting took place at about 3:45 p.m., Broderson said, just as the dance was beginning. The dance followed the school’s eighth-grade graduation ceremony.

“Mr. Pham was standing outside the auditorium when five juveniles tried to enter the dance,” Broderson said. “They were forced to leave by school supervisors (because they were) non-students.

“As they were leaving, they got into a shouting match with several others at the dance. For unknown reasons, they began chasing Mr. Pham in the parking lot, and then they shot him with a small-caliber handgun.”

“The suspects fled in two cars, and they were last seen driving south on Edwards from the school,” he said. “The investigation is continuing, and it appears that the shooting is possibly gang-related.”

Bischof said that when the shooting occurred, most of the students already were inside the auditorium.

“As soon as it went down, we made the kids stay inside,” he said. “We kept any outsiders from across the street away.”

“You never know in these gang-related things what the reason is,” Bischof said. “We’re just thankful that none of our kids were involved and we were able to keep everything under control.”

Broderson said investigators would like to hear from anyone, students included, who might have any information on the five assailants.

Westminster police said they hoped the incident did not signal the start of a trend in drive-by gang violence in Westminster.

“Boy, I hope not,” Frank said.