Man who was stabbed, bound, thrown in river in August appears in court

THANH VOONG, the man who on Aug. 27 survived being bound, stabbed eight times and thrown into the Schuylkill with two men who died, appeared in court yesterday looking relatively healthy.

Voong, whose age has been given as 23 and 19, testified at a preliminary hearing as the victim of an Aug. 9 beating and attempted abduction on League Street near Washington Avenue in South Philadelphia.

He pointed to Henry M. Le, 34, of Bailey's Run Lane, Springfield, Delaware County; and Nam Phan, 20, of South Malin Road, Broomall, as the men who used their car to block his BMW shortly after 10:40 p.m.

Phan tried to break the windshield of his car with the same hammer he used to beat his head and face, while Le punched and kicked him and announced that they were going to abduct him, Voong said.

"My whole face was a mess and I was bleeding everywhere," testified Voong, who added that he broke free and ran screaming onto Washington Avenue, where two police officers spotted him and arrested the defendants.

Although Municipal Judge Charles Hayden ordered Le and Phan to stand trial for aggravated assault, kidnapping for ransom and related counts, he struck from the record Assistant District Attorney Edward Cameron's question to Voong about surviving the Aug. 27 attack.

Hayden struck the question after defense attorneys Evan Hughes (for Phan) and Brian McMonagle (for Le) objected and Hayden and the attorneys left the courtroom to discuss the matter.

After the hearing, the attorneys were tight-lipped about whether the Aug. 9 incident was related to the Aug. 27 slayings, for which no one has been arrested.

"Who knows? I mean, it's the same complainant," was all that Cameron would say.

Hughes and McMonagle declined to comment.

But the safety of Voong appeared to be on the minds of court officials, who held the hearing in a courtroom fitted with bullet-proof glass normally used for homicide preliminary hearings.

Voong, under cross-examination by McMonagle, conceded that he used several aliases, had lied to Cameron about not knowing the defendants prior to the Aug. 9 attack, and had failed to notify his Delaware probation officer about his Aug. 12 arrest in upstate New York for bringing drugs across the Canadian border.

Voong told McMonagle that Le and Phan had been to his home to use and deliver marijuana.

The river slayings were drug-related, police have said.

Brothers Vu Huynh, 31, and Viet Huynh, 28, both of Paoli, were pulled lifeless from the river, their throats slit, arms and legs bound by duct tape and buckets filled with tar chained to their feet like anchors.

Both had been stabbed multiple times, as had Voong, who managed to get out of the river because his feet were not anchored.

Last month, Philadelphia police issued an arrest warrant for Tam Le, 42, charging him with being involved in the slayings and the attack on Voong.

Police believe the Huynh brothers were killed because they gambled away most of the $100,000 that an Asian gang had given them to buy drugs. Police also believe that when Voong brought the gang only part of its money to free the brothers, he also was tortured and taken to the river.