<\/p>\n
A shootout at the Good Guys electronics store on April 4, 1991, left six dead, including three hostages. The 8 1\/2 hour siege ended when deputies stormed the store. Three of the four gunmen died and 11 other hostages were wounded. The gunmen were all Vietnamese refugees. <\/p>\n
SKIP SHUMAN<\/p>\n
Sacramento Bee File<\/p>\n
Gaye Lauritzen was working as a teacher one day about 35 years ago. It was several hours before she learned of her connection to Sacramento\u2019s most infamous hostage crisis.<\/p>\n
Lauritzen, a Roseville resident, was married to Chris Lauritzen. On April 4, 1991, four Vietnamese refugees took Chris and 40 other people hostage around 1:30 in the afternoon at a south Sacramento Good Guys electronics store. Chris Lauritzen was a manager at the store for the now-defunct electronics chain.<\/p>\n
The crisis would end around 10 p.m. with three hostages and three hostage takers dead. A Sacramento County Sheriff\u2019s Department sniper shot at one of the hostage takers and missed, which spurred a chaotic conclusion to the incident.<\/p>\n
Gaye Lauritzen returned to her home around 6 p.m. that evening expecting her husband to be there. After she saw his car wasn\u2019t in the garage, she noticed the answering machine for her landline phone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw the blinking and I hit the number and they said, \u2018You have 11 messages,\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
It would be years before she recovered.<\/p>\n
A hostage, still tied to the store\u2019s entrance, tries to flee as firing erupts after a sheriff\u2019s sniper took a shot at one of the gunman at Good Guys electronics store on April 4, 1991. The incident left six dead, including three hostages. JUDITH CALSON Sacramento Bee file How the Good Guys hostage crisis unfolded<\/p>\n
Al Bodnar was by a computer near the front door of the Good Guys electronics store when he saw men out front putting ski masks on.<\/p>\n
Bodnar, who is now 66 and lives in Folsom, was a Good Guys salesman. He had transferred about a month before the incident to the south Sacramento store. With him was his friend John Lee Fritz Jr., who\u2019d worked with him at a Good Guys location in Citrus Heights.<\/p>\n
The men outside the store were Loi Khac Nguyen, Long Khac Nguyen and Pham Khac Nguyen, brothers and a fourth man they knew, Cuong Tran. They ranged in age from 17 to 21. Loi Khac Nguyen had legally purchased firearms just before the incident.<\/p>\n
When the men entered the store, Bodnar said, \u201cThey just started shooting up the place and yelling in Vietnamese.\u201d<\/p>\n
Approximately 40 people in the store at the time, including employees, were rounded up in the front, though there were exceptions.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/01_GOOD_GUYS_SHOOTOUT.jpeg\" "\\"01_GOOD_GUYS_SHOOTOUT\\"")
A gunman stands above bound hostages who are sitting on the floor at the Good Guys electronics store on April 4, 1991. The 8 1\/2 hour siege ended when deputies stormed the store, leaving six dead, including three hostages. Three of the four gunmen died and 11 other hostages were wounded. SKIP SHUMAN Sacramento Bee file <\/p>\n
Chris Lauritzen and a Good Guys salesperson fled into a locked closet where they would shelter for most of the incident. For nearly the entire time, they were on the phone with Leslie Beach, a dispatcher for the Sacramento County Sheriff\u2019s Department.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were whispering information,\u201d Beach said.<\/p>\n
When the gunmen entered the store, Bodnar ducked behind a computer. Fritz saw him do it and ducked as well. They remained undetected until approximately an hour into the incident, when one of the gunmen saw Fritz\u2019s foot sticking out.<\/p>\n
John Fritz Jr. commuted to the store from Auburn, where he lived with his wife Gail Fritz, who he\u2019d married in 1986.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was a terrific husband,\u201d Gail Fritz, now 79, said in an interview. \u201cHe was a really good cook. He was a great shopper. He could go out and buy me a complete outfit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just a week or two prior, they had been on the cover of the Auburn Journal after Gail Fritz\u2019s son from a previous relationship returned from serving in Operation Desert Storm.<\/p>\n
Gail Fritz\u2019s daughter, was turning 18 the day after the hostage incident. John Fritz Jr. had a present for his stepdaughter in his locker at work. Gail Fritz was decorating a birthday cake when she received a phone call from her son\u2019s friend, informing her of the hostage crisis and letting her know it was on TV.<\/p>\n
It was maybe 2 or 3 in the afternoon when she got the call, she remembered.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/SAC_5707_GoodGuysShooting_HA_260401.JPG\" "\\"SAC_5707_GoodGuysShooting_HA_260401.JPG\\"")
A pedestrian walks by the Dollar Tree store on Stockton Boulevard in Sacramento on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, that was once the Good Guys electronics store where a large hostage situation took place in April 1991. HECTOR AMEZCUA hamezcua@sacbee.com The view from the outside<\/p>\n
The Good Guys store was located at 7520 Stockton Blvd., technically an unincorporated part of Sacramento County that is contiguous with the city. Emergency response primarily fell to the sheriff\u2019s department.<\/p>\n
Jeff Boyes, then a 12-year veteran of the department, was a SWAT team member, which was sent on calls infrequently. He headed in a SWAT van to the Good Guys parking lot where his team took positions. Boyes was one of two SWAT team snipers on-hand. He positioned himself roughly 65 yards from the front of the store.<\/p>\n
A seven-member SWAT team soon gained access to the Good Guys store through the building\u2019s roof, with the team waiting quietly while the gunmen began to interact with a sheriff\u2019s negotiator.<\/p>\n
An officer holds one of the children allowed to leave the Good Guys store on April 4, 1991, after the hostage-takers were given what they thought was a bulletproof vest. The gunmen later demanded more such vests. GENARO MOLINA Sacramento Bee file <\/p>\n
A call for service related to the hostage crisis initially led to Beach deeming it a robbery-in-progress. Boyes operated under a similar assumption until law enforcement began to glean more information.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs they made contact with the people inside, we discovered it was less of a robbery and more of some sort of a harebrained political stunt,\u201d Boyes said.<\/p>\n
The young men, who had fled Vietnam as children, wished to return to Southeast Asia to serve as freedom fighters.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is truly a tragedy,\u201d said Linda Parisi, a longtime Sacramento defense attorney who represented Loi Khac Nguyen. \u201cThese young people at cross purposes, wanting to do the right thing, to go back to their country to fight for democracy \u2014 I mean, those are wonderful things, but just a terrible plan of how to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Linda](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/SAC_5299_GoodGuysShooting_HA_260401.JPG\" "\\"SAC_5299_GoodGuysShooting_HA_260401.JPG\\"")
Linda Parisi, a Sacramento attorney, holds a courtroom sketch from the trial of Lou Khac Nguyen as she sits in her office in Sacramento on Wednesday, April 1, 2026. Parisi represented Lou Khac Nguyen \u2014 the lone suspect that survived the hostage shooting in April 1991 at the Good Guys in Sacramento. HECTOR AMEZCUA hamezcua@sacbee.com <\/p>\n
The men sought bulletproof vests and safe passage to Asia, among other demands through the course of the incident. Their requests weren\u2019t necessarily static.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time they were on the phone, they couldn\u2019t remember any of their demands,\u201d Bodnar said.<\/p>\n
At one point, the men raided candy and soda machines and distributed them to hostages. Bodnar got a Pepsi and nacho cheese Doritos.<\/p>\n
The men let a small number of people go, including a store employee named Sean McIntyre who they shot in the leg and allowed to deliver a message to news cameras.<\/p>\n
After McIntyre was shot, Boyes received a green light to shoot if he had a clear shot. That green light came after the hostage takers started to shoot people. It represented a shift to law enforcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously the game had changed entirely at that point,\u201d Boyes said. \u201cWe knew that we were looking for an opportunity where we could use lethal force and get in to save as many people as we could.\u201d<\/p>\n
How the hostage crisis ended<\/p>\n
Boyes said his green light to shoot \u201cexisted for quite a long period of time.\u201d The challenge was that the glass doors were typically closed during the incident and hostages were often positioned close to hostage takers. Boyes didn\u2019t want to risk shooting a hostage if a bullet\u2019s path changed going through door glass.<\/p>\n
Finally, Boyes thought he had an opening when the hostage takers sent out a woman to collect body armor in front of the store.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause the glass was completely clear, I couldn\u2019t see that the door was closing as I fired my shot,\u201d Boyes said. \u201cInstead of hitting the bad guy, it hit the door and it\u2019s very, very thick structural glass, and it deflected the flight of the bullet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boyes added, \u201cThe bad guy that I was aiming at got some glass in the face. He could be heard yelling on the recording, \u2018Shot to face! Shot to face!\u201d<\/p>\n
The man who\u2019d been hit by glass was Long Khac Nguyen, 17. His older brother Loi Khac Nguyen, 21, had legally purchased guns used in the incident in the weeks before. He had handled much of the negotiations during the crisis before Long, who was more violent, wrested control, according to news coverage at the time.<\/p>\n
In a sickening moment broadcast live after Boyes\u2019s shot missed, Long moved quickly about, shooting many hostages. Fritz, fellow store employee Kris Sohne and a customer, Fernando Gutierrez would be killed. A total of 14 hostages were injured in the course of the incident.<\/p>\n
A gunman, right, begins to shoot hostages tied up on the ground at the Good Guys store on April 4, 1991, as smoke from a tear gas canister fills the area. BRYAN PATRICK Sacramento Bee file <\/p>\n
Father Dan Looney, a now-retired priest who led Gutierrez\u2019s memorial service, said Gutierrez died shielding his niece from gunfire. Gutierrez had been held hostage alongside two of his nieces, one of whom was three months pregnant and subsequently miscarried.<\/p>\n
Looney said Gutierrez, who was a member of his parish, had his infant son baptized a month before the hostage crisis.<\/p>\n
The waiting SWAT unit entered the store once the shooting commenced. Bodnar said popping noises lasted for about 90 seconds. At the end, Long Khac Nguyen, Pham Khac Nguyen and Cuong Tran were dead.<\/p>\n
Loi Khac Nguyen was injured seriously enough that he received last rites at UC Davis Medical Center according to attorney Parisi. He was arraigned while still hospitalized, according to news coverage then.<\/p>\n
Loi Khac Nguyen, the lone surviving gunman, is wheeled into the emergency room at UC David Medical Center on April 4, 1991. SKIP SHUMAN\/GENARO MOLINA Sacramento Bee file <\/p>\n
Boyes said if his shot had been a half-second sooner, he\u2019d have hit Long Khac Nguyen in the head as he was aiming. He doesn\u2019t know if that would have led to more fatalities.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s say that seeing their partner get blown up causes the other three people to be outraged and they all start shooting people on the ground,\u201d said Boyes, who is now retired and living in Tennessee. \u201cSo now, instead of one person shooting on the ground you have three. Maybe the outcome would be worse. It\u2019s not something you can really predict.\u201d<\/p>\n
How the incident ended has become an educational tool for law enforcement. Gail Fritz recalled a conversation she had with a Siskiyou County Sheriff\u2019s officer.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe told me that the film from the negotiations and whatnot is still being used by a lot of law enforcement officers or training sessions, which is because it was the first one like that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The aftermath<\/p>\n
After the incident ended, Al Bodnar faced assembled media<\/a> and made a comment that underscored the faith he\u2019d had since becoming a born-again Christian as a teenager: \u201cIt was a massacre. Thank God, by the grace of God I\u2019m alive.\u201d<\/p>\n Bodnar said he met his wife following the incident. Today, they share a 24-year-old daughter.<\/p>\n \u201cGod has a plan and a purpose for everything, everything,\u201d Bodnar said. \u201cEven though we may not understand it, there actually is a reason.\u201d<\/p>\n The event left an imprint even on those who weren\u2019t among the hostages, such as people like Beach working dispatch.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a big part of who I am,\u201d said Beach, who is now retired and lives near Phoenix. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to explain. But it\u2019s always gonna be with me.\u201d<\/p>\n When Gail Fritz got the call from her son\u2019s friend, she stopped decorating her daughter\u2019s cake and immediately turned on her television. While some people made their way to the parking lot while the incident was underway, she remained in Auburn.<\/p>\n \u201cMy dad was a cop \u2014 had been a cop \u2014 and he always told me, \u2018You don\u2019t go mess with the scene of a fire or a police action. You don\u2019t muck it up by going there,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cAnd so I did not go to Sacramento when I heard. I stayed home and watched.\u201d<\/p>\n Eventually, after the crisis ended, unable to determine whether her husband was alive or dead, Gail Fritz went to the parking lot. There, an officer ushered her under yellow tape.<\/p>\n Today, she lives near Mount Shasta, in the area where she grew up. She is a grandmother and great-grandmother. She said the experience of her husband\u2019s death bruised her but didn\u2019t break her. She handled the trial as best as she could and even met Loi Khac Nguyen\u2019s mom, who she felt \u201cso sorry for.\u201d<\/p>\n Loi Khac Nguyen was sentenced to 49 consecutive life terms in 1995,<\/a> The Bee\u2019s previously reported. He is now 56 and serving his sentence at Valley State Prison in Chowchilla, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Parisi considers Loi Khac Nguyen an ideal candidate for elder parole. Gail Fritz is less sympathetic.<\/p>\n \u201cI keep thinking, \u2018Well, God, it would be so nice if I heard that he died before I die.\u2019 But he won\u2019t,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Gail Fritz\u2019s husband is buried in Auburn. She arranged for a memorial bench, with the words \u201cmy good guy\u201d inscribed for him.<\/p>\n \u201cWomen have been doing this since the beginning of time, living with their family and their loved ones dying,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The other Good Guys employee killed in the crisis, Kris Sohne, was remembered for his humor in a 1991 interview<\/a> by his widow, then known as Mary Sohne. \u201cNo matter if I was having the worst day of my life, he could make me laugh,\u201d she said. She couldn\u2019t be reached for this story.<\/p>\n Gaye Lauritzen got to hug her husband after the crisis ended. But times weren\u2019t always easy in the years that followed.<\/p>\n Chris Lauritzen worked at Good Guys for a few years thereafter before it became too much. He struggled with noises, once screaming when he was taking a shower and his wife accidentally bumped a hair dryer cord against a door. He also didn\u2019t like to be \u201cin places where he couldn\u2019t see the exit,\u201d Gaye Lauritzen said.<\/p>\n In time, the Lauritzens took Good Guys up on an offer of counseling.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce he got better, then I started feeling better,\u201d Gaye Lauritzen said.<\/p>\n They would remain married, for a total of 45 years, until Chris Lauritzen died at 73 last year following a recurrence of lymphoma. Gaye Lauritzen noted that her husband was well-loved, with many people attending his memorial.<\/p>\n Loading\u2026<\/p>\n Related Stories from Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n![\"In](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/SAC_086_260204_JV_Good_Guys-2.JPG\" "\\"SAC_086_260204_JV_Good_Guys-2.JPG\\"")
In 1991, Good Guys employee Al Bodnar, center, survived a hostage situation during a botched robbery in South Sacramento. Bodnar is photographed with his wife Debbie, right, and daughter Kelly on Thursday, April 2, 2026. JOS\u00c9 LUIS VILLEGAS jvillegas@sacbee.com <\/p>\n Loi Khac Nguyen, left, speaks with Vietnamese interpreter Duc Nguyen, no relation, during sentencing proceedings in Sacramento Superior Court on July 17, 1995. Judge W.J. Harpham sentenced Nguyen to 49 consecutive life terms for his role in the Good Guys hostage incident on counts that included murder, attempted murder, kidnapping and gun violations. SKIP SHUMAN Sacramento Bee file <\/p>\n
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