Mom enters plea
in girl’s deathProsecutors contend the
woman's husband
inflicted fatal injuries
A 36-year-old Honolulu woman pleaded no contest yesterday to a reduced charge of reckless manslaughter for causing the death of her 3-year-old daughter 14 years ago.
Under a plea agreement, the state will ask that Hao Tuong Dang be placed on five years' probation and serve no jail time. She is expected to testify for the state against her ex-husband, who is accused of causing Melissa Dang's fatal injuries.
Along with her then-husband Chau Minh Dang, Hao Dang was indicted in November 1999 on charges of second-degree murder by omission for failing to obtain timely and appropriate medical care for her daughter from another relationship.
The girl died at Straub Hospital of abdominal trauma on April 9, 1989, less than a month shy of her fourth birthday.
It took 10 years before charges were finally brought by a grand jury because in child homicide cases there is seldom an eyewitness except the perpetrators, said senior deputy prosecutor Maurice Arrisgado.
The girl lived with her parents at a Date Street apartment at the time of her death. But other family members, including the grandmother and her sons and three daughters and their boyfriends, also had contact with her.
To establish who inflicted the fatal injuries, the state had to find a qualified expert who could testify that the injuries Melissa Dang suffered were inflicted within a certain time period before her death and that she would have lived had she received medical care, Arrisgado said.
Ten years later, in 1999, the state found Dr. Janice Ophoven, a pediatric forensic pathologist who has testified for the state in other baby murder cases in which the parents were subsequently convicted.
Ophoven testified before the grand jury that brought charges against both parents.
Dang is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 2, but that is likely to be continued until after she testifies in her ex-husband's case.
Chau Minh Dang's trial is set for November.