Fatal stabbing affidavit: Homeless woman said Wichita man wouldn’t stop touching her
A homeless woman charged with murdering a 49-year-old Wichita man on Aug. 17 told police she stabbed him because he wouldn’t leave her alone, repeatedly touched her legs and made unwanted sexual comments to her, according to an arrest affidavit released Tuesday by a Sedgwick County judge.
“He didn’t see it coming,” Latoya Annette McCurn, 34, told a Wichita police detective who interviewed her after 49-year-old Van Hung Nguyen’s body was found near a trash dumpster in an alley in the 7800 block of East Harry, near Rock Road.
McCurn is facing a first-degree premeditated murder charge. Her defense attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the case Tuesday afternoon.
According to the affidavit, a 64-year-old man walking in the alley on Aug. 17 called 911 after he discovered Nguyen bleeding and unresponsive. McCurn was in the alley but left as police arrived shortly before 4:30 p.m., according to the affidavit. The 911 caller told police that she was homeless, had been hanging around the area for about three weeks and usually sat under a tree in front of a business.
An officer found McCurn there and asked if she had seen the victim that day.
McCurn responded that she and the man — Nguyen — had been sitting in the grass in front of the business earlier, but she said she didn’t know his name.
Asked if she knew anything about how he was injured, she said: “Yeah, I stabbed him,” the affidavit says.
McCurn went on to tell police both at the crime scene and during an interview that Nguyen had been “messing with her,” so she retaliated by attacking him, the affidavit says. She told police that she met Nguyen earlier in the day and that he had sat with her in the grass for some time but wouldn’t stop slapping her legs and buttocks.
She said she told Nguyen to “‘stop doing that’” repeatedly, but he continued touching her, “thinking that his sexual ... statements and actions were funny.”
McCurn said Nguyen offered to walk to a nearby liquor store to buy beers for them both. She agreed.
When he came back, though, he started touching her again, McCurn told police.
It was then “she made the decision in her mind that the next time (Nguyen) ... slapped her legs or buttocks, she was going to retrieve a kitchen knife that she had in her bag and stab” him, the affidavit says McCurn told police.
She plunged the knife into his chest when he put his hands on her next, the affidavit says.
McCurn told police after she stabbed Nguyen, he picked up his beer and walked through a parking lot toward the rear of the business, eventually falling by the trash bin.
She said she followed and when she saw that he was unresponsive, she walked to a nearby Braum’s Ice Cream and Dairy Store and rinsed the kitchen knife off in a bathroom sink, the affidavit says.
She then walked to McDonald’s, filled a cup from the restaurant’s soda fountain and left without paying, according to the document.
She returned to the grass in front of the business and stayed there until officers showed up. The knife, she told police, was in her bag.
An autopsy determined Nguyen died from a single stab wound to his upper chest, the affidavit says.
McCurn was arrested and booked into the Sedgwick County Jail on Aug. 17. She remains there in lieu of $250,000 bond. Police previously said that she had recently been released from prison in Texas after serving a sentence there for arson-related charges.
Her next court date is Thursday.
This story was originally published August 31, 2021 at 5:31 PM.
