The last big San Francisco mass murder was the Bolagna murders, where a local butcher and his teenage sons were murdered by Edwin Ramos, a MS-13 thug who also turned out to have been an illegal immigrant protected by the District Attorney's office.
Now, there's been another spectacular act of mass murder - five Asian-Americans brutally murdered in their home with some sort of blunt instrument - and you'll never guess the immigration status of the accused murderer:
The suspect in last week's slayings of five people in San Francisco was ordered deported in 2006 after he served a prison term for robbery and assault, but immigration authorities had to let him go free because his native Vietnam would not take him back, officials said Monday.
Binh Thai Luc, 35, of San Francisco was released under the terms of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said undocumented immigrants must be released after six months if their country of origin won't allow them to return, according to officials with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
Luc is the only suspect to have been arrested in the killings in a home near City College of San Francisco. A source familiar with the investigation said authorities suspect the killer or killers may have been trying to collect on a gambling debt.
"Incredibly" (scoff) Luc had repeated run-ins with the law, but no one could quite figure out how to keep him separated from law-abiding folk.
Immigration officials had been eager to deport Luc after he was sentenced to an 11-year, 4-month term at San Quentin State Prison for a 1998 conviction for robbing a Chinese restaurant in San Jose at gunpoint, according to agency spokeswoman Gillian Christensen.
Federal agents took him into custody when he was released from prison on Aug. 2, 2006, after serving eight years, and a judge ordered him deported a month later.
"However, because Vietnamese authorities declined to provide appropriate travel documents, Luc ultimately had to be released because of the Supreme Court's ruling" in a 2001 case, Zadvydas vs. Davis, Christensen said.
Officials at the Vietnam Consulate in San Francisco could not be reached for comment.
I guess this isn't San Francisco's fault, per se, as it was loser federal immigration officials who let Luc go (and the smarter-than-they-look Viet Namese who refused to take him back). Still, you have to ask yourself what grand principle is being upheld when an obvious member of the criminal element is allowed to remain in the US indefinitely. I note that Luc's status is that of "undocumented" so it's not like he needed to kill someone to be deported.
Oh, and I'm sure Luc won't be getting the death penalty either...because SF is special that way.
No comments:
Post a Comment