Oberlin professor Pipo Nguyen-Duy and wife found shot dead; son charged
Daniel Jones, 31, waived a preliminary hearing and is held on a $3 million bond.
Law and Crime
Oberlin police have charged the 31-year-old child of Pipo Nguyen-Duy, a Guggenheim Fellowship-winning photographer who taught studio art at Oberlin College since 1998, with murder in the shooting deaths of Nguyen-Duy and his wife.
Daniel Jones, of Ashland, Oregon, faces six counts of murder, four counts of felonious assault and one count of tampering with evidence, Oberlin police and Oberlin Municipal Court records obtained by Urgent Matter show. Court and jail records also list Jones under the name Asia Nguyen-Duy.
Nguyen-Duy, 64, and his wife, Trần Thị Nam Phong, 56, were found dead Wednesday in their home on South Pleasant Street, each with multiple gunshot wounds, police said. Police identified the couple as Jones' father and stepmother.
Officers were first called at 8:57 a.m. Wednesday to the Oberlin College Conservatory parking lot on East College Street, where the fire department was handling a smoking car.
Officers looked for the car's registered owner, later named by police as the suspect, to check on their welfare. Jones was found in the 200 block of Shipherd Circle around 10:19 a.m. and arrested without incident, police said.
Officers reached the South Pleasant Street house at about 10:28 a.m. to check on Jones' family, police said. Nguyen-Duy was found on the first floor and Phong on the second.
A city notice posted that morning said the case was "believed to be of a domestic nature," and the public was not in danger because police had detained the sole suspect. Oberlin police and Lorain County law enforcement processed the home and car, the notice said.
Oberlin College President Carmen Twillie Ambar said police had the college issue a shelter-in-place order that morning, which was later lifted.
Jones was arraigned Thursday afternoon in Oberlin Municipal Court, where Judge Farah L. Emeka found Jones indigent and appointed attorney Jenifer C. Berki Merrill.
Jones signed a waiver giving up the right to a preliminary hearing. Emeka sent all charges to the next Lorain County grand jury session. The signed form states the waiver "does not constitute any plea to the offense nor can it be used against me."
Jones was booked into the Lorain County Jail at 8:59 p.m. Wednesday and remained there Monday under a maximum-security classification, records show. The judge set bond at $3 million cash or surety, plus a $25 state bail surcharge.
Jail records also list a separate charge of harassment by an inmate, with an offense date of Sunday and a $2,500 bond. This brings Jones' total bond to $3,002,500. That case has court dates Monday morning and November 9.
Two of the murder counts fall under the part of Ohio's murder law covering purposely causing a death. The other four cite the section on causing a death while committing a violent first- or second-degree felony.
Ohio law sets the prison term for murder at 15 years to life in most cases. Felonious assault, a second-degree felony, is charged in two counts alleging serious physical harm and two counts alleging harm with a deadly weapon. Tampering with evidence is a third-degree felony.
Ambar called Nguyen-Duy "a cherished colleague and a vibrant presence in the classroom and throughout campus" in a message to students and colleagues the day the couple was found. She wrote that she was "simply overwhelmed with sadness."
In a follow-up message Friday, Ambar said the community's grief was "compounded by the limited information available" and by local and national news coverage.
Nguyen-Duy was born in Hue, Vietnam, and came to the United States as a political refugee in 1975, his faculty biography says. He chaired Oberlin's studio art department.
He was a national-level table tennis player as a teenager in Vietnam and lived for a time as a Buddhist monk in northern India in the mid-1980s. He earned an economics degree from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, in 1983, then moved to New York, where he tended bar and later managed a nightclub.
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This fall, he was teaching Introduction to Black-and-White Photography and an intermediate photo project seminar, Oberlin's website shows. Carleton brought him back on May 3, 2024, to give a convocation talk titled "A Dust of Life," the college's event listing and LinkedIn post show.
Oberlin has opened a remembrance page for messages, and a small exhibition of his work is on view in the Allen Memorial Art Museum's East Gallery, Ambar said Friday. She said she understood the studio art faculty would plan a larger showing of his work for the spring semester.
The college said on LinkedIn that it would announce details on gatherings to remember Nguyen-Duy and Phong once confirmed.
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