The L.A. County District Attorney’s Office requested no bail for a 22-year-old Garden Grove man charged in a California Institute of the Arts student’s murder, sharing details from the brutal allegations in a court motion to justify the prosecution’s pretrial request.
Deputy District Attorney Yasmin Fardghassemi wrote she had concerns about Jack Minh Terry’s ability to make a statutory $2 million bail in a Feb. 19 motion seeking to have Terry held in custody throughout his trial for the murder of 23-year-old Emily King, also known as Menghan Zhuang.
Fardghassemi’s concerns were due in part to the context of the particularly violent crime Terry is accused of, “disclosing a high degree of cruelty, viciousness and callousness,” she wrote. He is facing a sentence of 25 years to life if convicted of premeditated murder.
“The defendant came to the victim’s home, engaged in sexual activity, and then brutally murdered her before fleeing the scene,” according to the motion, which also describes injuries for King consistent with a brutal assault and strangulation.
“The victim’s injuries included blunt force trauma to the forehead, swollen left eye, puncture wound to the right ear, small wounds to the neck, and severe petechiae (bleeding under the skin) to both eyes, inside of the mouth and all over the face,” Fardghassemi wrote. “The puncture wound to the neck ruptured the carotid artery.”
Terry had no criminal history prior to Lakewood Sheriff’s Station deputies arresting him on suspicion of King’s murder, according to the prosecution’s notes.
Sheriff’s Lt. Michael Modica said Terry was arrested Feb. 16 as the result of an investigation by the Homicide Bureau, with assistance from the department’s Major Crimes Bureau, which surveilled Terry prior to his arrest.
Modica would not indicate the nature of King and Terry’s relationship, only that the two knew each other and investigators believed King let Terry into her apartment the evening before her roommate found that she had been murdered on Feb. 4. She shared a room with a man in his 20s whom detectives said early is not a suspect.
Modica says Terry, described in Sheriff’s Department records as a 5-foot, 8-inch, 125-pound Asian man, matches the man captured in video surveillance footage leaving King’s bedroom window on the second floor hours before her body was found
He is being held without bail at Men’s Central Jail in Downtown Los Angeles. His next hearing date is scheduled for March 27.
