Youth drowns friend in bag, demands ransom from family

Youth drowns friend in bag, demands ransom from family Ho Chi Minh City police have arrested a young man who admitted to drowning his schoolmate by stuffing him into a bag and throwing it into a river, and then coercing the victim’s family to pay him over US$23,000 as a ransom last month.

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Nguyen Kim An, 19, hailing from the central province of Binh Thuan, was captured by the police in Binh Tan District on Tuesday, 12 days after he murdered his 18-year-old classmate Luu Vinh Dat.

An has confessed to the killing and will be prosecuted on charges of murder and plundering property, said Major General Phan Anh Minh, deputy director of the HCMC police.

According to the case file, An and Dat were students at a software programming school in Tan Binh District.

On the night of February 26, An phoned Dat and told him to come to An’s rented room in Tan Binh’s Ward 4 to discuss their training schedule at the school. Dat later arrived on a motorbike.

During their discussion, Dat told An that the former’s family had a large deposit in a bank.

An then thought of a plan to kill Dat and extort his family.

He secretly mixed sleeping pills in a glass of lemon juice and offered the drink to Dat, who fell asleep soon later.

An tied Dat’s two legs together and put the victim in a sack. The man carried the sack on Dat’s bike to the Phu My Bridge in District 7 and threw it into the river down below at 10:00 pm.

The murderer returned to Ward 4 and brought the bike to a parking lot.

He removed the SIM card of Dat’s iPhone 4 from the device and threw the handset into a canal.

An later installed the SIM on another phone and used it to send a text message to Dat’s mother who lives in Binh Tan District, telling her that Dat had been kidnapped, and forcing the woman to pay VND500 million ($23,600) as a random.

The next morning, the mother reported his demand to the Binh Tan District police, who launched an investigation that led to the arrest of An on March 11.

The police have recovered the bike and are searching for the iPhone, Major General Minh said.

Investigators suspect that An might have been assisted by someone in committing the crime, Minh said, adding that they are expanding their investigation to identify his possible accomplices.

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