ATLANTA — The man who gunned down a local attorney in the middle of Peachtree Street on her way to work was sentenced Thursday to life in prison.
Trinh Huynh was a corporate lawyer for UPS walking to work in the heart of midtown when Raylon Browning gunned her down in a crosswalk for no apparent reason on April 3, 2017.
Huynh’s family finally got to face Browning in court Thursday, and Channel 2 investigative reporter Mark Winne spoke to them after the hearing.
“Trinh Huynh was the best of us,” sister Chi Kindland said. “The great state of Georgia who welcomed her and our family so many years ago, has lost a brilliant adopted daughter who worked tirelessly for everyone she encountered.”
“She did absolutely nothing wrong and there was nothing she could’ve done to protect herself. It was a very, very frightening crime that could happen to any one of us on any day,” Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said.
The verdict came back very quickly. Fulton County Deputy District Attorney Gautam Rao said as a lawyer prosecuting criminal cases for a decade, he’s never seen a faster verdict for murder.
“How long was the jury out?” Winne asked Rao.
“11 minutes,” he said.
Rao and Assistant DA Jazmin Dilligard said that the verdict also included findings of guilt against Browning for stabbing and wounding two victims the morning before and for punching out a Fulton County Jail inmate the day after the murder.
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“What do all four of his victims have in common?” Winne asked Rao.
“Their minorities,” Rao said.
They still don’t know what the motive was behind the attacks.
Surveillance video shows Browning on the path Huynh took on her way to work, and of the shooting itself was key to the case, but his face was not clearly identifiable. So was witness testimony.
“Just before he’s crossing the street, you can see white letters on his hoody and that is consistent with the sweater that was recovered from the defendant’s vehicle when he was arrested,” Dilligard said.
Kindland told Winne that she wants to appeal to the public that if you witness a crime, come forward because that was crucial to getting justice in this case.
“In a sense, it gives us comfort that he’s not out on the streets to hurt others,” Kindland said.
Browning was sentenced to what totaled to life without the possibility, plus 25 years.
“There was a lot of evidence that I think melded together very well to complete the puzzle,” Kindland said.
Kindland said sister Dem Huynh and sister Dao Huynh, the latter doing the heart-wrenching victim impact statement in the sentencing hearing, are from a big family with six sisters, including Trinh, who escaped Vietnam with their mother in 1979 and friends of Trinh’s who joined the family in the courthouse have become like family.
“Where did you find the strength to get through this?” Winne asked Dem Huynh.
“I think part of that is having faith, and part of that is having the village that you see here. Some of the folks are gone, but they’ve been here, and they just listened if we need to cry,” Dem Huynh said.
“I am sure there are people watching your story right now saying, ‘What took that prosecutor so long? It’s 2025. This happened in 2017.’ But the reality is, he has been in and out of mental health facilities since the time of this incident while he became competent so we could try this case,” Willis said.
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