Man gets 24 years for robbery, attack

After her face had been smashed to a bloody pulp during a robbery while she was tending to her clothing store in Southwest Philadelphia in 2008, police found Anna Hoang crawling out of the store, unable to see where she was going.

Yesterday, U.S. District Judge J. Curtis Joyner sentenced her attacker, Anthony Hadaway, who has been in custody since the incident, to more than 24 years in federal prison.

Hadaway, 36, apologized to Hoang yesterday, but Joyner wasn't persuaded. "Your conduct in this case . . . shows me you have no feeling, no remorse for individuals that get in your way," Joyner said. "You took advantage of this woman, and you didn't have to do it. You should not be on the streets."

Court papers said that on Aug. 1, 2008, Hadaway entered the Fashion Unlimited store on Woodland Avenue and grabbed Hoang, a diminutive woman who immigrated here from Vietnam in 1975, by the back of her head and smashed her face against the floor of the store.

The attack permanently disfigured her. A trauma surgeon testified in November at Hadaway's trial that Hoang, who was 60 when attacked, suffered multiple fractures to the left side of her face, including fractures to the left orbital socket.

Prosecutors said Hoang spent many months in therapy after she was released from the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

Hadaway was convicted of two counts of robbery and acquitted of using a firearm during a second robbery - of a dry-cleaning establishment on 52nd Street - that he committed five days after he attacked Hoang.

During the second robbery, prosecutors said, Hadaway threatened the victim by pressing a knife against her and later binding her in the back of her store.

Hadaway netted $600 from the first robbery and $250 and some credit and debit cards from the second.

Hadaway, a father of three, had previously been convicted of four robberies over a six-month span in 1995 and served more than 12 years in state prison.

Defense attorney Mark Greenberg had sought a lesser sentence and noted that Hadaway had suffered from depression and other mental problems since age 11.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Zaleski said Hoang was so traumatized by the attack that she has not resumed full-time employment and never reopened her clothing store after the robbery. Her business remains shuttered.