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Hate Crime Charged in Death of Thung Phetakoune

Thung Phetakoune. File photo

By Associated Press

Racial hate drove Richard Labbe to kill his Laotian American neighbor — charged a Rockingham County, N.H., grand jury indictment.

Labbe, 35, has been charged with a hate crime for the beating death of Thung Phetakoune at the Newmarket, N.H., apartment complex where they both lived. Labbe was indicted on two alternative counts of second-degree murder.

According to police, on July 14 Phetalkoune had tried to break up an argument between Labbe and Sam Chan, another neighbor who recently had delivered an eviction notice to Labbe from the building landlord.

“So you like to kill Americans, why don’t you try to kill me?” Labbe’s teen-age son told police he heard his father yell.

Police gave Phetakoune’s age as 62, but his son said his father was in his 70s and had falsified his age when he came to the United States.

Labbe told police he pushed Phetakoune after the older man hit him in the face, but Phetakoune’s son and other witnesses said Phetakoune never touched him. The victim struck his head onthe ground and died two days later.

“Those Asians killed my brother and uncle in Vietnam, call it payback,” police say Labbe told them. “If you’re not going to do anything about these Asians in my country, then I will.”

Labbe had an uncle who served in Vietnam, but he returned home unharmed, according to Labbe’s father. He did not have a brother who fought in Vietnam.

Ironically, Phetakoune was forced from his homeland in the 1970s because he had fought on the American side in the war, said Fong Thiphanh, a family friend.

Phetakoune’s grandson said he saw police cars rushing to their neighborhood after the attack. When he ran outside, he saw his grandfather lying in a pool of blood between two cars in the parking lot. Phetakoune’s grandson said it took two police officers to wrestle the 220-pound Labbe to the ground. The vicitm was said to have weighed between 80 and 120 pounds.

Labbe’s father, Carlton Labbe of Clinton, Mass., blamed his son’s problems on drinking.

“He’s not a racist. He never was. He has an alcohol problem,” he said in a telephone interview last month. “Every time he gets drunk, he goes haywire. That’s the only time he’s mean.”

Labbe told police he had drunk roughly a case of beer the evening of the assault.

In Massachusetts, where he grew up, Labbe was convicted of kidnapping in 1986, assault in 1990 and assault with attempt to rape in 1991.