Man who survived shooting that killed wife testifies at daughter’s trial

A father who narrowly survived a purported home invasion in which his wife was fatally shot in the head testified Tuesday about the elaborate web of deceit his daughter had spun in the years before the attack.

Glancing impassively at his daughter in the prisoner’s dock, Hann Pan described how she had soaked her parents for thousands of dollars while lying about attending school or work and where she was living.

Among the lies, court heard, were a fake university diploma, a bogus hospital volunteer job, phoney part-time work at a department store complete with a fake pay stub, and the fiction that she was rooming with an acquaintance.

Jennifer Pan, 27, her high school sweetheart Daniel Wong, 28, and three others are each charged with first-degree murder in the November 2010 death of her 53-year-old mother, Bieh Ha Pan.

According to the prosecution, she had promised to pay $5,000 for each parent killed from her share of her inheritance.

Crown lawyer Michelle Rumble elicited that the Pans, who owned their home outright, would have left an estate worth about $1 million at the time of the killing.

Their son and daughter stood to inherit the money equally, something his wife had often discussed with their daughter, Pan told the court.

Pan, 60, a tool and die maker, said he often wanted to query his daughter about her studies but his wife would intercede, arguing the young woman was already a grown up.

“Let her be herself. Too much interference will not be good,” Pan said his wife told him.

The web of lies finally unravelled in 2009, when the suspicious father noted his daughter had no uniform or key-card for the Toronto hospital she said she was volunteering at.

“I was frustrated and I was concerned that something was not right,” Pan told jurors through a Vietnamese interpreter.

When he drove her to the hospital, she bolted and disappeared.

The following morning, after the friend she was apparently rooming with said she was not staying there, Pan came home and confessed:

“Jennifer said that she lied. She did not work at the hospital. Had not graduated from university. My daughter said she was currently living with her boyfriend, Daniel Wong,” Pan testified.

“I was very upset.”

The angry father ordered his daughter to sever her relationship with Wong and return to school. She apparently agreed.

“He had covered for my daughter to stay out of school for the last four years,” Pan explained.

Pan was shot in the face during the attack at the family home in Markham, Ont., but survived. His wife was killed by two shots to the head — one at point-blank range.

The prosecution alleges that what happened was a deliberate hit orchestrated by their daughter, because her parents had thwarted her relationship with Wong.

In the months before the attack, Han discovered his daughter was still in contact with Wong, and gave her an ultimatum: Cut ties with him or leave the family forever.

Again, the daughter said she would stay home and not have contact with her boyfriend.

Also charged with Pan and Wong in Ontario Superior Court are Eric Carty, Lenford Crawford and David Mylvaganam.

Before she was fatally shot, Pan’s mother repeatedly begged the intruders not to harm her daughter, the Crown alleges.

Pan’s home-invasion story fell apart when it became clear her father would live, court has heard.

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