Good Guys Horror Still Haunts Sacramento 35 Years Later

Thirty-five years after four gunmen stormed the Good Guys electronics store on Stockton Boulevard in south Sacramento, survivors say they still replay the sights, sounds and split-second decisions from that spring afternoon. On April 4, 1991, roughly 40 employees and customers were held at gunpoint for about eight and a half hours, until a chaotic rescue effort around 10 p.m. left six people dead and more than a dozen wounded.

Former manager Chris Lauritzen, salesman Al Bodnar and other survivors have recently shared fresh details about what they saw and thought inside the store, while 911 dispatchers who fielded whispered calls from people hiding in closets say they can still hear those voices. Those interviews and recollections were gathered into a new retrospective as the city marked the milestone, according to The Sacramento Bee.

How the Siege Unfolded

Shortly after 1 p.m. on April 4, 1991, four young men walked into the Good Guys and quickly turned an ordinary shopping trip into a live-television crisis. They took roughly 40 people hostage, demanded a helicopter and cash, and spent hours negotiating by phone with law enforcement. The standoff played out in real time on local and national newscasts and dragged into the night before a police assault finally ended it. Contemporaneous reporting describes the siege as one of the largest hostage-rescue operations ever carried out on U.S. soil, with Los Angeles Times coverage detailing the long negotiations and massive law enforcement response.

Who the Gunmen Were

Investigators later identified the attackers as brothers Loi Khac Nguyen, Pham Khac Nguyen and Long Khac Nguyen, along with their friend Cuong Tran, all in their late teens or early 20s. Authorities said some of the firearms used in the takeover had been legally purchased in the weeks leading up to the attack, and negotiators reported a string of unusual demands from the group as the hours ticked by. Names, approximate ages and those demands were laid out in wire service accounts at the time, as reported by UPI.

The Moment That Changed Everything

At about 9:54 p.m., after hours of tension and stalled talks, a sheriff’s sniper fired through the front door as a tethered hostage crawled toward a bulletproof vest. The swinging door deflected the round, and the crack of that misdirected shot signaled deputies hidden at the rear of the store to move. As deputies rushed out of their concealed positions, one of the gunmen opened fire into a group of tied-up hostages, instantly escalating the bloodshed and costing several lives before the exchange of gunfire ended the siege. A contemporaneous reconstruction by the Los Angeles paper remains one of the fullest public accounts of those frantic final minutes.

Victims and Survivors

Three hostages were killed during the ordeal: employees Kris Sohne and John Fritz Jr., and customer Fernando Gutierrez. Many others were wounded, physically and psychologically, and survivors and their families describe trauma that has stretched across decades. Some hostages credit quick thinking, small acts of courage and each other’s presence for saving lives, while relatives of those who were killed talk about long years of grief that never fully recede. A local anniversary retrospective revisits the list of victims and injuries and gathers survivors’ memories in one place, as noted by CBS Sacramento.

Trial and Sentence

The lone surviving attacker, Loi Khac Nguyen, was tried and convicted in 1995 on multiple counts that included murder and kidnapping. A judge sentenced him to 49 consecutive life terms after prosecutors sought the death penalty. Contemporary wire stories recorded the jury’s verdict and the recommendation on punishment, and noted that Nguyen has remained in state custody since that conviction, as reported by UPI.

“It was a massacre,” one survivor said, summing up the panic and the scramble to live that unfolded in those hours - a description echoed again and again in new interviews with local reporters. The Sacramento paper’s anniversary coverage returns to those firsthand accounts and traces how the siege has shaped the lives of survivors, dispatchers and first responders ever since, The Sacramento Bee.

As Sacramento approaches the 35th anniversary on April 4, 2026, survivors and community members say revisiting that day is part of preserving the city’s history and honoring the people who were killed. Their recollections show how an ordinary afternoon in a neighborhood electronics store still reverberates through families and across the region.