VIRGINIA BEACH — Oanh Le could not control her sobbing Thursday as she watched a surveillance video of her daughter being injected with cyanide.
“Oh my god! Oh my god! My daughter,” Le said, covering her mouth and wailing loudly.
When asked to identify the man seen in the video attacking her daughter, 35-year-old Ellie Mizon Tran, Le responded: “Merlino.”
The video was one in a set of two that were presented to Virginia Beach General District Substitute Judge Anthony Nicolo during the preliminary hearing for Joseph “Joey” Vincent Merlino III.
Merlino was charged with second-degree murder on Feb. 16 in connection with Tran’s death. The pair had dated for three years and shared a 2-year-old daughter together named Jolie.
They were broken up at the time of the alleged attack, said Le, who is Vietnamese and testified through a translator.
Le testified that Tran was attacked in their Still Meadow Court driveway around 8 p.m. on Valentine’s Day. Le was inside the house when she heard Tran scream.
When she opened the front door, Le testified that her daughter said Merlino “stabbed” her in her thigh and that she was completely numb.
“She was terrified,” Le said.
Le ran outside and testified that she saw Merlino run across the street. She said that although it was dark outside, she recognized him by the way he walked and his side profile, which showed his hair and beard.
“When I saw him cross the street I knew it was him,” she said. “It was dark but I could identify him because he came to my house many times.”
Although Tran was able to call 911 for herself, she quickly became so sick that she couldn’t speak, lost consciousness and needed a breathing tube, Le said in a January interview with Southside Daily.
Tran died the next day at Sentara Princess Anne Hospital. An autopsy revealed that she’d been poisoned with cyanide.
Merlino was arrested on Feb. 16 and has been in the custody of the Virginia Beach Correctional Center without bail since that time.
During a cross examination of Le, defense attorney Richard Doummar questioned her ability to testify against Merlino without bias. He cited a July 2016 assault and battery charge filed against the elderly woman by Merlino.
In court documents filed in Virginia Beach General District Court, Merlino wrote that Le assaulted him on July 5, 2016 when he was picking up Jolie from the Still Meadow Court home.
As he physically picked his daughter up, Le motioned for him to put the baby down. When he didn’t comply, she grabbed his shirt, scratching his face and arm, court documents state.
Le was found guilty of the charge on Oct. 24, 2016, however the charge was nolle prossed when she appealed it in Virginia Beach Circuit Court, according to court spokeswoman Macie Allen.
“There has to be bias,” Doummar said.
Prosecutors argued that they believed a protective granted to Tran against Merlino in July 2016 could have been a motive behind her murder in February.
On July 11, 2016, Tran told police that Merlino assaulted her in front of their daughter.
“My boyfriend scared me. He told me he will put me under the ground behind his house,” Tran wrote in the criminal complaint filed in Virginia Beach Juvenile Domestic Relations Court.
Tran went on to detail the alleged attack, writing that Merlino grabbed her by the neck, restrained her hands and feet and hung her upside down with her head almost touching the ground.
“I could not do anything,” she wrote. “He did that to me several times in front of my daughter … My daughter was so scared and she cried and scream [sic].”
Merlino was charged with assault against a family member. The charge was dismissed with prejudice, and Merlino was fined $1,000.
“My recollection is that both sides dropped the case,” Doummar said to Southside Daily in March.
Nicolo certified the case against Merlino to a grand jury, which will meet on Sept. 5. The judge added that he found “more than sufficient evidence” to move the case to Virginia Beach Circuit Court.
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