2005: Nguyen Van Van

On this date in 2005, Nguyen Van Van, the onetime coach of Vietnam’s national taekwondo team, was shot for murder in Ho Chi Minh City.

The wire story does not appear to be available in a current archive but was secondhandedly cited here and here. Here’s how it ran:

Martial arts master executed

From correspondents in Hanoi
January 14, 2005

A FORMER coach of the Vietnamese national tae kwon do team was executed by firing squad in Vietnam for murder, a court official said today. Nguyen Van Van was put to death today at Long Binh execution ground in the southern Ho Chi Minh City, an official from the city People’s Court said.

A municipal appeal court handed down in June 2004 the death sentence to Van, who was only sentenced to life imprisonment at his first trial in March of the same year, for murdering a man in an ambush on December 19, 1996.

The incident took place at a cafe after one of Van’s sons got involved in a brawl with a customer. Accompanied by family members, Van stormed into the cafe where he injured the cafe owner and stabbed to death his brother-in-law, Le Hong Quan.

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