A Huntington Beach man pleaded guilty Wednesday to special circumstances murder and was immediately sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for the killing of his co-worker, a retired Cal State Fullerton administrator who was found dead in a vehicle on the campus.
Chuyen Vo agreed to a plea deal requiring he admit to stabbing 57-year-old Steven Shek Keung Chan to death after lying in wait in a campus lot at College Place and Langsdorf Drive on the morning of Aug. 19, 2019. He also admitted to to embezzling from the college over a nearly two-year period.
In return, prosecutors agreed to dismiss a second special circumstances enhancement alleging that Vo killed Chan for financial gain. Dismissing that allegation had no impact on Vo’s sentence, since he still received life behind bars without the possibility of parole, but it meant that Vo did not acknowledge that the killing was directly tied to the embezzlement.
Vo’s decision to accept a plea deal prior to trial meant that the current prosecutor on the case, Deputy District Attorney Jeff Moore, did not have to outline a motive or full narrative of the crime to jurors. But a different prosecutor during a 2021 preliminary hearing offered the theory that Vo had killed Chan to prevent Chan from exposing Vo’s embezzlement.
During often emotional comments to the court, Chan’s wife, Margaret, and his two sons, Matthew and Jonathan, described Chan as a devoted husband and father who was dedicated to his children’s future, as well as a quiet, patient, hard-working family man who others relied on for sage advice.
“My dad was ripped away from us in the most brutal way possible,” Matthew Chan said.
The sons told Orange County Superior Court Judge Sheila Hanson that they have struggled not having their father with them to see the academic milestones he had pushed and helped them to achieve. The widow told the judge that her heart “was shattered into pieces” by her husband’s killing, adding…
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