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SALT LAKE CITY — A 3rd District judge ruled on Thursday there will be no bail set for Anh Day Pham, meaning he will remain in custody while charges against him are pending.
Pham, 27, is charged with nine counts of attempted murder, a first-degree felony; six counts of failing to stop at an accident with serious injury, a third-degree felony; and three counts of failing to stop at an accident with injury, a class A misdemeanor.
Judge Adam Mow said the requirements for substantial evidence to support the charge was sufficient to hold Pham without bail.
Multiple women who were injured after being hit by a car attended the hearing, either in the courtroom or virtually, and statements from two of those women were read to the judge by attorneys.
One woman said: "He chose to stomp on his gas pedal and hit me with his car on purpose ... and then he took off like hitting me hard enough to fly off past his windshield was nothing."
Deputy Salt Lake County attorney Karissa McKinney argued that two different laws could require Pham to remain incarcerated. She said he was on pretrial release in another felony case when the alleged crime occurred, meeting the requirements of one law. Then she argued there would be a substantial danger to others, meeting the second law.
McKinney spoke about the incidents and said multiple witnesses testified that the car's driver slowed down and then, while people were crossing the street, he would accelerate. One time, she said Pham swerved "all the way into oncoming traffic," and another time a woman moved behind trash cans, and he hit the trash cans as well as the woman.
One of the women who was hit was admitted to a hospital intensive care unit and is still having medical issues, according to McKinney.
"This case is difficult in the fact that there are multiple victims, a total of nine, spread throughout Salt Lake Valley — all strangers to Mr. Pham," she said.
McKinney said the car Pham drives is unique for a Toyota Avalon becaue it has aftermarket tinted windows, no sunroof and doesn't have an antenna that is on many versions of the car. She said the surveillance videos match his car, and once officers found the car, it appeared that Pham was living in the car. The car also had damage matching the car seen in the incidents, McKinney said.
The prosecutor also said Pham admitted to officers he was the only person who drove the car.
However, Pham's attorney, Elise Lockwood, said the car is a family car belonging to his mother. She pointed out only the car is identified in each incident, not the driver.
She argued that the crime he was previously charged with was a property crime, "nothing even remotely similar to something like this," and said he had appeared in court on that charge and communicated with his attorney.
Lockwood said wrapping the allegations into attempted murder, like prosecutors chose to do, means they have more to prove because it has a higher bar for intent than an assault or fleeing from the scene of a crash.
She called it "ambitious charging" and encouraged Mow not to let the name of the charge influence how dangerous he determines Pham would be to the community.
In the end, Mow said that even if the case were charged differently, "There are still a great number of felony charges … any one of those, I think, would be likely sufficient to deny Mr. Pham bail."
Pham will be back in court on June 7 for a scheduling hearing.
