PRESS RELEASE

Date: April 16, 2004

Fifth Annual Sacramento County District Attorney
Outstanding Citizen Awards
Friday, April 23, 2004 @ 9:30 a.m.
Board of Supervisors Chambers, County Administration Building
700 H Street
Contact person: Lana Wyant, Special Assistant Deputy District Attorney
Phone: 874-5907

Uncommon courage. That is the characteristic shown by the eleven individuals receiving the Sacramento County District Attorney Outstanding Citizen Award. Each of these people testified in criminal cases and demonstrated extraordinary bravery and social conscience through their cooperation with our criminal justice system. This year's recipients include the following individuals:

Katerina Prindle walked up to the front door of her house with her father and witnessed him shoot her mother between the eyes as she greeted them. As Jessica Harris, Katerina's aunt, came to the aid of her sister and best friend, she was shot twice in the back and then twice more in the face.

Mary Chaffin is an 83 year-old woman who had her independence and self-security violently taken from her the night an intruder entered her Carmichael apartment.

Tony and Sahn Nguyen both witnessed the shot that took their older brother's life. The college student was killed by a gang member outside a Stockton Boulevard café as he and his brothers enjoyed a night out together.

Laurie T. broke the deafening silence that surrounded multi-generational religious ritualistic child molesters. Her actions prevented these molesters, her father and aunt, from further inflicting the physical, sexual and emotional abuse she experienced on other siblings.

Marguerite R., a 65 year-old woman, was confronted by a complete stranger on a walk home from her neighborhood market in the Bowling Green area. She was beaten, drug into a field, sexually assaulted and robbed.

Mijalina O., an 11-year-old girl, was stabbed twice in the chest with a kitchen knife, by her father. As her neighbors Yvonne Dixon, Alexander Dixon and Olivia Dixon tried to intervene the defendant stabbed two of them numerous times as well.

Please join us in honoring these heroes.

Back to Press Releases Index