Don't make Minh Tam Thi Phan raise her shoe.
Or knock your brains out with a rock.
The San Diego County 50-year-old is scheduled to be arraigned in Westminster today on charges she tried to murder a woman she owed $100,000 by violently beating her with a rock and shoe.
Phan met a woman the Orange County District Attorney's office identifies as Catherine H. the afternoon of April 22 to repay the borrowed $100,000. Phan drove Catherine to a restaurant, saying the money was there, darted in to pick something up and then returned to the car.
During the subsequent drive, Phan pulled over into a residential area of Fountain Valley, got in the backseat with Catherine and locked the doors, according to police and prosecutors who say the suspect then pulled out a rock and repeatedly hit the passenger in the head with it.
Catherine managed to get out of the car and take off running, but she was allegedly pursued by Phan, who then started hitting the victim in the head with her shoe. Catherine suffered lacerations to her head and a broken tooth.
Witnesses watching all this unfold contacted the Fountain Valley Police Department. Phan is accused of getting back into the car, locking the doors, hitting herself in the head with the rock and pretending to have been knocked out cold. Arriving cops found the car keys on the ground, unlocked the door and arrested the would-be possum.
Phan made bail after originally being booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon. But, upon further investigation, she was re-arrested Wednesday and charged with one felony count of premeditated attempted murder, one felony count of assault with a deadly weapon, and one felony count of false imprisonment by violence and deceit with sentencing enhancements for causing great bodily injury and personal use of a deadly weapon. Her bail was set at $1 million.
A conviction would set Phan up for a maximum sentence of 11 years to life in state prison.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.