Mother in murder-suicide gone wrong gets 25 years to life, Sacramento judge decides
A Sacramento County woman convicted of murdering her adult daughter in an apparent murder-suicide attempt gone wrong was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison, District Attorney Thien Ho said Tuesday.
Hong Pham, 56, was sentenced Friday by Superior Court Judge James Arguelles for first-degree murder in the death of her daughter, Oanh Hoang, court records show.
Pham strangled Hoang with a shoestring on Sept. 26, 2016, and placed her body in the back of her car, Ho’s office said in a news release Tuesday. Pham then drove the car to a parking lot near Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and abandoning it before running into traffic on the roadway.
A suicide note in which she confessed to the killing was later found in her home.
Prosecutors did not specify the neighborhood, but The Sacramento Bee reported a few days later on Oct. 2 that a woman’s body had been found in a car parked near Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Fruitridge Road in the Lemon Hill section of unincorporated south Sacramento.
Pham suffered a traumatic brain injury after she ran into traffic but lived, prosecutors said. She was charged with murder in December 2016, court records show. She pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and was committed to a state mental hospital in 2017, court records show.
However, she was later deemed fit to stand trial and on Nov. 21, 2024, was convicted of first-degree murder. Her request for a new trial was denied and, on Dec. 18, she was found to be mentally fit to be sentence, court records show.
Pham remains in Sacramento County Main Jail custody and is due back in court for a restitution hearing March 14, court records show.
