This day in History: Forty-one people are taken hostage inside a Good Guys! Electronics store on this day in 1991 in Sacramento, California. Three of the hostage takers and three hostages are killed.
Forty-one people were taken hostage inside a Good Guys! Electronics store by four gunmen.
The four gunmen were all Vietnamese immigrants: brothers Loi Khac Nguyen, 21; Pham Khac Nguyen, 19; and Long Khac Nguyen, 17; and their friend, Cuong Tran, 17. The Nguyens had fled Vietnam as a family of eight in 1979 at the start of the second wave of Vietnamese refugees.
On the day of the hostage crisis, Pham Nguyen briefly came to school and asked to be excused with a toothache. The Nguyen brothers told their parents they were going fishing at the Sacramento River.
At approximately 1:00 p.m., on April 4, 1991, the four young gunmen drove into the parking lot of the Good Guys! electronics store, in the South Area of Sacramento County. The group left their vehicle, a 1982 Toyota Corolla, and entered the store armed with three pistols and a shotgun.
They herded customers and staff into a group, including a shoplifter attempting to leave the store, and began shooting at the ceiling of the store. One employee escaped after being ordered to lock the doors. Although initial reports indicated they had taken the hostages after a failed robbery attempt, subsequent statements to hostages and negotiators instead proved "they were attempting to gain notoriety," according to Sacramento County Sheriff Glen Craig. They were frustrated with their lives in the United States since it was difficult to find good jobs and expressed a desire to travel to Thailand and fight the Viet Cong, according to two of the hostages.
The lone survivor of the suspects, Loi Nguyen, was arraigned from his hospital bed shortly after the crisis ended and charged with 54 felonies, including murder. At the sentencing hearing in Sacramento, Judge W.J. Harpham said, "It's hard to find the adjectives for the terror the defendant put these hostages through." He sentenced Loi Khac Nguyen to 49 life terms in prison, 41 to be served consecutively without the chance of parole. Information that surfaced at Nguyen's trial revealed the men's motivation for committing the crime was that they were frustrated by their inability to learn English and find jobs.
To this day, the hostage crisis remains the largest hostage rescue operation in US history, with over 40 hostages having been held at gunpoint.
Footage of the event was featured in World's Scariest Police Shootouts in 1997.
In 2019 a movie called A Clear Shot, based on the incident, was released. It starred Hao Do as Loi, Kevin Bach as Pham, Tony Dew as Long, and Dang Tran as Cuong.
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