A 21-year-old woman died after being stabbed 107 times while trying to protect her mother from her stepfather.
Angelina Tran, a student at the University of Washington, attempted to break up a fight between her stepfather Nghiep Chau and her mother in the kitchen of their Seattle home in the early hours of Aug. 7.
According to a police report, Tran put herself between her mother and Chau and a struggle ensued, knocking them both to the ground. Chau then got a kitchen knife from a drawer and began stabbing Tran.
“The attack didn’t stop there. Documents say Chau paused the attack on Tran several times, including once to change clothes and another time to grab a different kitchen knife, and another time to search for his wife,” per Fox 13.
Her mother fled to a bedroom where she called the police. Law enforcement arrived at the house around 5 a.m. and escorted Tran’s mother and grandmother from the home. Officers saw Chau coming downstairs with the knife, which he dropped before being taken into custody.
Chau reportedly told officers he would have killed his wife if police had not arrived.
The entire incident, including Chau’s initial altercation with his wife, was caught on video via a home security system. Chau allegedly punched his wife 15 times in the face and head.
Tran was pronounced dead at the scene and her mother was hospitalized.
“Chau told investigators that he thought his wife was going to divorce him and take all his money,” reports Fox News. “He then became angry at Tran when she tried to block the attack against her mother.”
Chau was charged on Aug. 10 and is being held on a $5 million bail. He was classified as a flight risk after prosecutors argued he showed irrational and extremely violent tendencies, per the Seattle Times.
A fundraiser created in memory of Tran calls her “an incredible daughter, a cherished friend, and above all, a perfect girlfriend.”
“She excelled in her studies, with just one more year remaining at the University of Washington, Seattle,” the organizer wrote. “Her radiant smile was a source of immense joy, and though the ache of her loss is deep, we believe Angelina would want us to stand strong and keep our smiles bright. Angelina possessed a deep love and compassion for the elderly, and she held a strong desire to support them in any way she could.”
The proceeds from the GoFundMe will be given to the National Asian Pacific Center on Aging. As of Aug. 25, over $23,000 has been donated.
According to the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were 856,000 victims of domestic violence in America in 2020 and 910,000 in 2021.
“On average, nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States. During one year, this equates to more than 10 million women and men,” reports the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. “1 in 4 women and 1 in 9 men experience severe intimate partner physical violence, intimate partner contact sexual violence, and/or intimate partner stalking with impacts such as injury, fearfulness, post-traumatic stress disorder, use of victim services, contraction of sexually transmitted diseases, etc.”
The NCADV also notes that 20% of victims in intimate partner homicides were not the partners themselves but “family members, friends, neighbors, persons who intervened, law enforcement responders, or bystanders.”
