Prosecutors said electronic evidence showed Duy Nguyen planned the Longmont shooting for weeks before firing at least six shots at Chance Cardona.
LONGMONT, Colo. — A Boulder County judge has sentenced Duy Nguyen to 40 years in prison after prosecutors said she waited outside her former boyfriend’s apartment and shot him at point-blank range as he got out of his car on Feb. 5, 2025.
The sentence closes one stage of a case that drew a sharp response from investigators and prosecutors, who said the attack was not spontaneous but planned. Nguyen, 26, was convicted in December of attempted first-degree murder, first-degree assault and sentence enhancers tied to violence. The victim, Chance Cardona, survived multiple gunshot wounds and called 911 after the shooting, turning what prosecutors described as a near-fatal ambush into a case built around forensics, electronic records and his own account from the scene.
Authorities said the shooting happened just after 8:45 p.m. when Cardona returned from the Colorado Mountain Kava Bar and parked at his apartment complex in Longmont. As he opened the car door, he was hit at least six times. Prosecutors said the bullets struck his face, shoulder, arm and thigh. Even after being wounded, Cardona managed to call for help and gave officers a partial identification of the shooter. That early statement became a key part of the case. District Attorney Michael Dougherty later said the investigation showed how quickly a violent attack could be solved when officers gathered physical evidence and moved fast. Longmont Police Chief David Moore said after the verdict that Cardona had been “ambushed and suffered multiple gunshot wounds,” calling the case a tragic act of gun violence.
Investigators said the evidence trail widened within hours. Shell casings recovered at the apartment complex and automatic license plate reader images showing a vehicle leaving the area helped police focus on Nguyen, according to the district attorney’s office. Officers later carried out a search warrant at her home, where they said they found the gun used in the attack. They also seized electronic devices that prosecutors said revealed weeks of planning before the shooting. Authorities have not publicly detailed each message or search they relied on at trial, but they said the digital evidence showed preparation rather than a sudden confrontation. That distinction mattered because the state argued Nguyen acted after the relationship had already ended months earlier, waited for Cardona to arrive home and opened fire as he stepped out of the vehicle. The defense position was not laid out in the public summaries released after the verdict, and some trial arguments remain outside the public record available in the case overview.
The case also fit a pattern prosecutors often flag in domestic violence cases: danger can continue after a breakup and can escalate outside the home, in parking lots, apartment complexes and other ordinary places. In this case, investigators said there was no chance encounter. Their public statements described a targeted attack tied to a former relationship that had ended months before the gunfire. That timeline gave the jury a broader frame for what happened on the night of the shooting. Rather than focusing only on the minutes around the ambush, prosecutors tied the shooting to a longer chain of conduct that they said included planning and surveillance. Boulder County officials also emphasized the role of technology in the case, especially license plate reader images and data taken from Nguyen’s devices. Those details helped explain why the state pressed for a lengthy sentence even though Cardona survived. Prosecutors argued the outcome could easily have been a murder case had medical care, luck and Cardona’s ability to call 911 not intervened.
Nguyen faced a sentencing range of 16 to 48 years in the Department of Corrections on the attempted murder count, and 10 to 32 years on the assault count, according to the district attorney’s office before the hearing. She was sentenced Feb. 13, 2026, after the jury’s Dec. 19, 2025, verdict. Public summaries released after sentencing said the court imposed a 40-year prison term. Prosecutors had argued that the severity of the ambush, the number of shots and the evidence of advance planning justified a sentence near the upper end of the range. The district attorney’s office said the verdict included two crimes-of-violence sentence enhancers, which increased the stakes of the hearing. No additional public court filing reviewed for this story laid out any pending appeal by Nguyen as of March 16, 2026. If an appeal is filed, it would move the case into a new phase focused less on the facts of the shooting and more on trial procedure, rulings and the sentence imposed.
Outside the legal record, the facts that stood out most were stark and ordinary at the same time. A man came home at night, parked where he lived and opened a car door. Prosecutors said that simple moment had been selected in advance as the place to attack. The image of Cardona calling 911 after being shot multiple times became one of the central facts repeated in official accounts because it showed both the severity of the injuries and the narrow margin by which he lived. Officials did not release new comments from Cardona in the material reviewed for this article, and no detailed victim statement was publicly included in those summaries. Still, the public statements from prosecutors and police framed the sentence as a measure of accountability rather than closure. Dougherty said the victim received justice through the verdict, while Moore said the case reflected a strong joint effort by officers, detectives, staff and prosecutors. The case now stands as a concluded trial with a prison sentence in place and the factual record largely set by the jury’s findings.
For now, Nguyen remains sentenced to 40 years in the Colorado prison system, and the next formal milestone would likely come only if she seeks review in a higher court or if new post-conviction filings appear in the public docket.