Fiancée Shot in Head After Argument, Local Man Charged With Murder

A Fountain Valley man was arrested Thursday on charges of murdering his fiancée by shooting her in the head after they argued about his other girlfriend, authorities said.

Philip Ngoc Nguyen, 25, was being held on $1 million bail in a case that took months to unravel and was first described as a suicide, according to the District Attorney's office. If convicted, he faces a maximum 50 years to life in state prison.

According to prosecutors, Nguyen, who lived with his parents in their Fountain Valley trailer, had been dating 26-year-old Uyennie Ton for about three years when she discovered in February that he had been having a sexual relationship with another woman.

He agreed to end the affair and then proposed to Ton, authorities said.

A few days later, on Feb. 25, Nguyen is accused of inviting the second woman to his home for sex. She declined.

"He's a strange bird," said Deputy District Attorney Sonia Balleste, who is prosecuting the case. "There's a lot of things about him that don't make a lot of sense."

After Nguyen's phone call to the other woman, he and Ton reportedly began arguing in his bedroom. Nguyen then killed her with a single gunshot to the head, prosecutors said.

The blast awakened Nguyen’s sleeping mother, who called 911 to report that Ton had committed suicide.

Fountain Valley police investigated the case and eventually ruled out suicide.

"The wound itself is not very telling of how it was inflicted, so we had to do some scientific testing to figure that out,'' Balleste said, explaining why it took seven months to arrest Nguyen.

Nguyen also gave "conflicting statements'' about what happened, so investigators had to rule out those possibilities, Balleste told City News Service.

Nguyen is expected to be arraigned Tuesday at 10 a.m. in Department CJ-1, Central Jail, Santa Ana.