Jury acquits defendant in Revere murder

REVERE -A Suffolk Superior Court jury late Tuesday acquitted a man of second-degree murder after almost two weeks of testimony suggesting he drove to Revere, opened fire outside a family home, and fatally shot 20-year-old Tai Nguyen in the head.
Anh Vu Nguyen, 21, of Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood, was found innocent of second-degree murder for the March 16, 2007 attack, which took the victim’s life in front of his parents as he set up a DVD player.
Prosecutors had argued that Anh Vu Nguyen fired the shots in anger over the fact that his one-time girlfriend had become involved in a romance with Tai Nguyen’s brother. That man was not injured in the attack.
The incident came three days after Anh Vu Nguyen allegedly threatened the intended victim, saying there would be a real problem if he didn’t stay away from the young woman. Phone company records indicated that he was using his cell phone in the vicinity of that man’s Augustus Street home in Revere just before and after the shooting.
The victim died when one of the three bullets fired pierced a wall of the house and struck him in the head.
In the aftermath of the shooting, Anh Vu Nguyen changed his cell phone number and his billing address and fled the state. State Police homicide detectives tracked him to Illinois and arrested him in Mount Prospect, a suburb of Chicago, on Oct. 1, 2007.
Nguyen was represented by attorney Rosemary Scappicchio during the trial in Boston before Judge Margaret Hinkle. Suffolk Assistant District Attorney Edward Krippendorf prosecuted the case.
Although the victim and defendant share the same surname, they are not related, according toJake Wark, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office.