Prosecutors said Huy “Max” Nguyen changed his story repeatedly after Alison “Kate” LaPorta was fatally shot in April 2024.
FAIRFAX, Va. — A Fairfax County judge sentenced Huy Tien “Max” Nguyen to 23 years in prison on Feb. 13 after jurors found him guilty of second-degree murder and a firearm charge in the 2024 shooting death of his girlfriend, Alison “Kate” LaPorta.
The sentence closed a case that turned on whether LaPorta, 38, was killed by Nguyen or took her own life. Prosecutors said the evidence showed Nguyen shot her after an argument, then told investigators a long series of false stories to cover it up. Nguyen, 48, had faced up to 40 years on the murder count and three more years on the gun charge after a Fairfax County jury convicted him in September 2025.
LaPorta was shot on the night of April 17, 2024, after she and Nguyen, who had been dating for about a year, spent part of the evening at Revolution Darts & Billiards, according to trial testimony. Men who were with the couple told jurors they had been arguing. One witness testified that Nguyen said, “The only way this argument ends is with a bullet.” Another said Nguyen declared, “I’m going to shoot this girl.” Later that night, Nguyen drove LaPorta to Inova Mount Vernon Hospital with a gunshot wound to her upper body. She was then transferred to Fairfax Hospital, where she died. Prosecutors said the shooting happened while both were seated in a vehicle and argued the physical evidence did not match Nguyen’s account that LaPorta shot herself.
Police said Nguyen began offering different explanations almost immediately. At first, prosecutors said, he claimed LaPorta had been struck by a random bullet in a parking lot in Annandale. Investigators quickly determined the couple had not been there. Nguyen later told detectives that LaPorta shot at him with his CZ 97 BD .45-caliber handgun and then turned the weapon on herself. In a videotaped interview, he said she grabbed the gun from the console during a dispute in the car and fired several shots, with bullets going through an open window. Prosecutors told jurors they tracked more than 400 lies and changes in his account over the course of the investigation. Body camera video from the hospital showed Nguyen holding up blood-marked hands and arms as officers began asking what happened. Police recovered the gun near the steps of Nguyen’s home, and prosecutors said its location, the bullet path and a photograph showing the gun’s imprint on LaPorta’s seat belt pointed to Nguyen as the shooter.
The trial also drew attention to LaPorta’s mental health history because the defense argued she died by suicide. Defense lawyers introduced hundreds of pages of medical records from 2022, when LaPorta had been hospitalized during a mental health crisis. A forensic psychologist testified that she had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type, and said that illness could raise the risk of suicide. Prosecutors countered that the case had to be decided on what happened in the vehicle on April 17, 2024, not on records from two years earlier. They told jurors the forensic evidence, witness testimony and Nguyen’s shifting statements were stronger proof than his explanation. The jury rejected the suicide claim and found Nguyen guilty of second-degree murder and of using a firearm in the commission of a felony, stopping short of a first-degree murder conviction that would have carried a different legal finding about planning and intent.
The case carried heavy weight for LaPorta’s family, who described her in court and afterward as a mother of two whose loss shattered several generations. Her obituary said she lived in Alexandria and was born July 11, 1985. At sentencing, prosecutors and relatives asked the judge to impose the maximum punishment on the murder charge. They argued the crime was aggravated not only by the killing itself but by the effort to mislead police afterward. After the judge imposed 23 years, family members said the punishment was not enough. LaPorta’s daughter, Katlin Lasky, said Nguyen should have received “the full 40 and plus some.” Tim Pounsberry, LaPorta’s father, said the killing brought “absolute destruction” to the family. The sentence meant Nguyen avoided the highest penalty available on the murder count, a result that left relatives saying the legal outcome did not match the scale of their loss.
In the months between the verdict and sentencing, the case had already become a closely watched example of how prosecutors build homicide cases when there is no neutral eyewitness to the shooting itself. Their theory relied on the timeline, witness accounts from earlier in the night, the firearm’s path, the position of the people in the vehicle and the number of times Nguyen changed his story. Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano said after the conviction that LaPorta “should still be with us today” and that Nguyen’s lies did not let him escape accountability. The sentence does not erase the unresolved questions that often remain in domestic homicide cases, including exactly what was said in the vehicle moments before the shot was fired. But the verdict and sentencing established the court’s answer to the central question: jurors accepted the prosecution’s claim that LaPorta was killed by Nguyen, not by her own hand.
For now, the case stands as a completed trial with a prison sentence in place, though any post-trial motions or appeal steps would unfold separately through the Virginia court system. As of the sentencing, Nguyen was headed to prison under the 23-year term imposed on Feb. 13, 2026, after his September 2025 conviction. LaPorta’s family, meanwhile, said they are focused on preserving her memory for her children and relatives. Nearly two years after the shooting, the legal process has produced its answer, but the emotional reckoning described in court has not ended.