OAKLAND — Two men have been given life sentences with differing chances for parole in the 2018 murder of a popular restaurant owner killed outside one of her businesses during an attempted robbery.
Paul Paez, 43, was sentenced to 25 years to life, while Donte Holloway, 45, was sentenced to 50 years to life, court records show. Both men were convicted in April of murdering 61-year-old Cindy Le during an April 2018 attempted robbery in Alameda.
Prosecutors say the pair followed Le from the Pho Anh Dao restaurant in Oakland to a second location of the restaurant in Alameda, then attempted to rob her. During the fracas she was knocked to the ground and assaulted. Though witness testimony disputed whether both men physically attacked her, prosecutors argued they were both culpable for murder under the law.
At the sentencing hearing last August, Le’s daughter, Jennifer Nguyen, submitted a written letter stating that after five years, Le’s family is relieved the court process is finally over. Still, Paez and Holloway are appealing their convictions, according to court records.
“Our family hasn’t been the same since she’s been gone. How could it?” Nguyen wrote, later adding, “Family gatherings are now seldom to none. My mother was the reason why everyone gathered to begin with.”
Nguyen went on to write that while Le was buried five days after her death, “it took five years to finally get some answers,” but the family can “finally close this chapter in our life.”
Holloway submitted a letter too, read aloud in court by his attorney, in which he wrote that despite having an incarcerated father during his upbringing, he graduated high school, attended Chabot College, and got jobs at KFC and UPS. The letter concluded with a plea to Judge Rhonda Burgess to “judge me according to what pertains to me and nothing else,” and that he knows “how serious this case is.”
Despite being sentenced in late August, both men remain in Santa Rita Jail in Dublin pending transfer to the state prison system, records show.
