A man accused of killing a 9-year-old Oakdale boy while randomly shooting at passing traffic will undergo yet another mental evaluation before he goes to trial.
Nanh Lap Tran was led into a Washington County courtroom on Friday as both families watched from the gallery. He is charged with killing Devin Aryal, a fourth-grader, as the boy rode home from day care with his mother, Missy Aryal, on a cold February night in 2013.
Tran's attorney, Susan Drabeck, asked for another medical review of "my client's capacity to proceed."
District Judge Gary Schurrer granted the request and suspended Tran's court proceedings for 60 days. He also delayed February's scheduled jury trial because attorneys for both sides said they would need more time to prepare once the mental evaluation was complete.
"We want to make clear the state intends to prosecute once the defendant is determined competent," said Jessica Stott of the county attorney's office, noting the gravity of the charges.
Tran has spent the past 17 months at the St. Peter Regional Treatment Center. He faces two counts of second-degree murder, one count each of attempted second-degree murder and first-degree assault with great bodily harm, and two counts of second-degree firearm assault with a dangerous weapon.
All are felonies.
He is accused of walking to Hadley Avenue near 7th Street, about a block from his home in Oakdale, and randomly shooting at cars as they drove by.
Devin's mother was hit in the arm, and a woman who was driving in another vehicle with her three grandchildren was hit in the hand.
In May 2013, Schurrer found Tran to be mentally ill and dangerous based on two separate evaluations, and put off a trial on the shootings until Tran could get treatment.
Last June, Schurrer decided Tran was competent to proceed to trial. However, Friday's order has indefinitely delayed Tran's trial, for which no new date was set.
"Mental health being what it is, it's always possible there will be regressions," said Fred Fink, criminal division chief in the county attorney's office. He said the law requires another evaluation if a defendant is showing signs of not being competent for trial.
This will be Tran's third court-ordered evaluation, Fink said, and it will be conducted by Minneapolis psychologist John Patrick Cronin.
Tran's relatives, immigrants from Vietnam, have asserted that he had been mentally ill for years but that they couldn't afford mental health care.
After the shootings, Tran told detectives "that cars had been following him around for a while and the persons driving the cars had been revving up their engines while parked in front of his house and waking him up."
Tran admitted to shooting at the vehicles, court documents show. He also said he shot at them to quiet the noise.
Staff writer Jim Anderson contributed to this story.
