The 2020 Củ Chi Shootings and Manhunt

The January 29 shootings

On January 29, 2020, a group was playing Sic bo, a dice game, in a garden in Tân Thạnh Đông Commune, Củ Chi District. Contemporary police reporting identified Lê Quốc Tuấn, then a 33-year-old officer assigned to the District 11 police custody and temporary-detention unit, as a participant in the game.

According to the police account reported by VnExpress, Tuấn lost money, left after an argument and later returned with an assault rifle. Four people were killed at the garden and another person was wounded.

A fifth death and a widening investigation

Police said Tuấn fled with money from the gambling site. Later that night, a 40-year-old man was shot dead elsewhere in Củ Chi and his motorbike was taken. Investigators attributed that killing to Tuấn as part of the same flight from the first scene.

On January 30, Ho Chi Minh City police issued a wanted order naming Tuấn as a suspect in murder, robbery and illegal use of military weapons. The wording matters: the order was an investigative accusation, not a conviction.

The manhunt

A large police search continued for roughly two weeks. Investigators also pursued people suspected of helping Tuấn hide, possessing weapons or handling property allegedly connected to the crimes.

Several related defendants were later prosecuted for offenses such as harboring a fugitive, weapons violations and receiving property obtained through crime. Those later cases did not substitute for a murder trial of Tuấn himself.

The February 13 confrontation

On February 13, police surrounded a location near Xáng Bridge in Củ Chi after receiving information that Tuấn was hiding there. Ho Chi Minh City police said he fired three rounds toward officers while attempting to escape the cordon. Police returned fire and Tuấn was killed.

Authorities recovered the assault rifle and ammunition at the scene. His death ended the manhunt, but it also meant prosecutors could not take the murder allegations against him through a criminal trial.

Legal status

This case is classified as Identified by Police / No Trial, within Crime by Region's Unsolved / Partial archive. Police publicly attributed the five killings to Lê Quốc Tuấn and formally sought him for murder and related offenses, but no court adjudicated those homicide charges because he died before trial.

That distinction prevents a police accusation, however detailed or strongly supported, from being rewritten as a judicial conviction. Separate convictions of people connected to his flight concerned their own conduct and do not change that status.