When Gunner Jay Lindberg Killed Thien Minh Ly, Was It Actually a Hate Crime?
If Thien Minh Ly had looked up as he Rollerbladed in slow circles on the Tustin High School tennis courts, he would have seen a few stars flickering in the partly cloudy night sky over the nearby Santa Ana Mountains. The 5-foot-6, 117-pound immigrant with a gentle demeanor and a curiosity for discovery had been back in Orange County for a year after returning from graduate school at Georgetown University, and he was still mulling his next career move. Doctor? Lawyer? He’d even voiced a hope to one day serve as the first Vietnamese American ambassador to his birthplace. The 24-year-old’s boyish looks belied his tenaciousness. With his family, Ly—born in Tuy Hoa, a coastal village in Central Vietnam—fled brutal conditions in communist Vietnam via boat in 1983 after his father, an officer in the South Vietnamese military, was released from a concentration camp. After a stint living in an Indonesian refugee camp, the family arrived in California. Only 12 years old at the time, Ly led his n
