Story updated at 1:45 p.m., Nov. 14, 2014
Two women were sentenced to six years in prison Friday for their part in a brawl outside a Santa Ana nightclub that killed a 23-year- old woman waiting to get inside.
Candace Marie Brito, 27, and Vanesa Tapia Zavala, 26, were convicted of voluntary manslaughter and assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury for the Jan. 19 melee outside the Crosby Bar and Nightclub that killed Kim “Annie” Pham, who was waiting with friends to get inside.
“I am so sorry for your loss,” Brito told Pham’s family in court. “In no way did I intend for this to happen.”
She thanked the Pham family for their “graciousness,” and said. “I can’t imagine the pain you must be suffering.”
“I will live with this for the rest of my life,” Brito said.
Zavala also apologized to the family, saying, “As a parent I can only imagine your loss.”
Zavala said she has been separated from her son since her arrest at the beginning of the year.
“My heart goes out to all of you. Again, I am deeply sorry,” Zavala said.
Senior Deputy District Attorney Troy Pino said during the trial that witness accounts and two videos proved the defendants kicked Pham in the head outside the now-closed bar.
Evidence showed Pham started the battle, but Pino said he believes she sustained her fatal injuries as she was vulnerable and could not defend herself.
Dr. Etoi Davenport, who performed the autopsy on Pham, testified during the trial that she sustained six major blows to the head, and any one of them could have killed her. Pham was in a fistfight that she started with another woman, identified by defense attorneys as Emilia Calderon, and could have been killed by one of those punches, according to Brito’s attorney, Michael Molfetta.
Zavala’s attorney, Kenneth Reed, told jurors that prosecutors failed to prove a cause of death in the case. Reed argued that the victim was also punched by others, which could have caused her death, and said his client did not kick Pham.
In his closing argument, Pino showed jurors two videos of the beating at regular and slower speeds as he tried to reconcile the footage with accounts of what happened from witnesses, such as security guards and friends of the victim. But in some cases, he noted witnesses were reluctant to testify and the prosecutor had to have police testify to what the witnesses said in the days after the beating.
Pham and her friends were waiting in line early Jan. 19 when Calderon bumped into Pham while leaving the establishment with her boyfriend, Zavala and her boyfriend, and Brito, according to Pino. Pham and her friends were taking a photo outside the club at the time.
Pham likely threw the first punch and the fighting briefly stopped, but then it started up again and ultimately Pham was dragged down to the ground by her hair by Zavala and Calderon, Pino said.
Pham was declared brain dead when she arrived at a hospital and was disconnected from life support two days later, after her organs were harvested.
Orange County Superior Court Thomas Goethals decried the senselessness of the crime and wondered why all of the combatants did not just “walk away” from the scrum.
“These were all funny, smart, bright young women,” Goethals said of the victim and defendants. “Why didn’t they walk away?”
The judge noted how Pham’s friends attempted to pull her away from the brimming battle.
“You were all in the fight up to your elbows,” Goethals said. “If any of you just swallowed your pride and walked away none of us would be sitting here.”
The victim’s father, James Pham, said as a Roman Catholic he wished to try to forgive the defendants.
“I hope we will be praying for each other,” Pham said.
The victim’s sister, Katie Nguyen, said she was just beginning to improve her relationship with her sibling, with whom she often quarreled, when the deadly brawl happened. She said she quit her job to keep vigil by her dying sister’s side.
“I remember crying so much my eyes could no longer produce tears,” she said.
Since her sister’s death she has battled sleeplessness, waking up from nightmares drenched in sweat and at times crying so much she hyperventilates, she said.
The victim’s stepbrother, Ken Nguyen, said his sister’s death was “like losing a limb.”
Ken Nguyen said his newborn son “will never have a cool aunt” like his sister.
“It’s just so hard to believe she’s gone. She was the life of the family,” he said. “I’m always going to miss her perkiness, her laughs, her smile.”
The bar fight should give everyone pause to “think twice before doing anything reckless,” Ken Nguyen said.
—City News Service