Man linked to death of Noelle O'Soup was deemed 'danger to public' — then released from immigration custody

CBC News has uncovered disturbing new details about the deceased occupant of a Vancouver apartment where the remains of a 14-year-old Indigenous girl and a woman were found this spring.

Van Chung Pham was ordered deported from Canada six years before police found the bodies of Noelle O'Soup and an as yet unnamed woman in his home in the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood this May.

The CBC has learned Noelle and the other victim were not the first women to die in Pham's presence. 

Immigration authorities declared him a danger to the public because another woman died of an overdose in his former residence in Vancouver and because he sold fentanyl to vulnerable drug users.

Yet Pham was released from immigration custody with virtually no supervision in October 2020 as there appeared to be no hope of removing him from Canada in the face of a pandemic and foot-dragging Vietnamese officials.

"I'm satisfied that you are a long-term drug addict and that you use meth and fentanyl. I'm also satisfied that you sell drugs to people and that you give drugs to vulnerable women so that they will have sex with you. One woman died of an overdose in your room," Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) tribunal member Michael McPhalen told Pham upon granting his release.

"So I do find that you pose a danger to the public. The only reason I'm releasing you is that I do not believe there is any possibility [the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA)] will be able to get a travel document for you and return you to Vietnam."

Neglect of duty investigation

CBC has obtained transcripts and audio recordings of both court and immigration hearings involving Pham in the years before he died. The details raise as many questions as they answer.

Vancouver police found Pham's body in his apartment in February, but initially missed the remains of Noelle and the other woman. They returned to Apartment 16 of the Heatley Block more than two months later after neighbours complained about a foul smell. 

That oversight has led to a neglect of duty investigation against an officer involved in the case by the Office of the Police Complaints Commissioner.

The Vancouver Police Department (VPD) has said Pham's death is not suspicious — but the other two deaths are now part of a major crimes investigation.

Police have said nothing about Pham or his history, but the CBC has confirmed that the 46-year-old was charged just days before he died with sexual assault and administering a drug in a case involving a different woman.

That incident allegedly occurred in November 2020. The file was closed after his death.

Noelle, a member of Key First Nation in Saskatchewan, fled a provincially run group home in Port Coquitlam, B.C., in May 2021 when she was 13. The RCMP, who have jurisdiction in that area, have said they actively searched for her.

The teen's family are demanding answers as to how government and judicial systems failed to protect a vulnerable Indigenous girl from falling into the clutches of a man like Pham, whose criminal record spans nearly three decades.

First issued deportation order in 2012

At a 2015 sentencing hearing for drug-trafficking charges, Pham's lawyer told a judge Pham had "a very difficult background."

According to court documents, Pham became a permanent resident in January 1993 after spending four years in refugee camps with his sister and aunt in Hong Kong and the Philippines. Pham and his sister came to Canada, but his aunt and uncle were deported to Sweden. His earliest criminal conviction was in 1994. 

Pham was sentenced to 30 months of probation for drug trafficking in 1997. He was first issued a deportation order in 2012 after a conviction for break-and-enter, but that order was stayed following an appeal the following year.

Pham soon found himself back before the courts.

In 2015, he testified that he began using heroin "since I moved here" and was also addicted to crack cocaine. He claimed he went straight for a time but started self-medicating after a fall from a five-storey roof left him with brain injuries and chronic pain.

The trial heard that Pham had almost non-existent language skills in English, having never taken a language class. His lawyer said Pham didn't work for the last 10 years of his life and sold drugs to maintain his own addiction.

"He's a very marginalized individual," the defence lawyer told the judge in 2015.

At that hearing, Crown Counsel David Peltier countered that society "needs to be protected" from people like Pham, who were fuelling a deadly toxic drug crisis gripping the Downtown Eastside. He noted that Pham showed "minimal" remorse.

"That's significant," Peltier told the judge. "His lack of insight that his efforts and his activities are exacerbating a problem — a problem that he himself should be all too familiar with."

At the close of the 2015 trial, the judge gave Pham a 30-day sentence and a year's probation. The ruling was enough to reinstate the deportation order against him in 2016.

'Women were coming to your room to use drugs'

In the years that followed, Pham was in and out of immigration custody, released again and again on conditions that he invariably broke.

According to the transcript of an immigration hearing from July 2020, Vancouver police found him in possession of hard drugs five times between his first release in November 2017 and an arrest for drug possession in 2018 that earned him a one-day jail sentence.

At some point during that time, a woman died of an overdose in Pham's old room in the Hotel Canada at 518 Richards St. in downtown Vancouver. Pham was not charged in connection with the incident.

"Staff at the Canada Hotel report that women often come to your room when they're not supposed to, and I believe that those women were coming to your room to use drugs. That is extremely dangerous behaviour on your part," McPhalen told Pham at the IRB hearing in October 2020.

"Vancouver has a very serious problem with people dying from overdoses from fentanyl and other illegal drugs. You are providing those people with drugs and whenever you do that, they run the risk of dying of an overdose."

In July 2020, a different IRB tribunal member released Pham on 12 conditions that included a promise to reside at a substance abuse facility where he was supposed to receive treatment.

He walked away months later, only to be arrested by Vancouver police after a 911 call from people who said Pham was banging on their door and demanding to enter.

'Purely for the purposes of housekeeping'

At Pham's final immigration hearing before McPhalen, Logan Sherwood, counsel for the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, said the government had "made extensive and continued efforts to try to obtain travel documents" for Pham from Vietnam since February 2019.

Pham's parents didn't want anything to do with his repatriation.

"What seems clear at this point is that the Vietnamese either don't want to issue a travel document for Mr. Pham or that the Vietnamese are being very difficult," Sherwood told McPhalen.

At that point, Pham was being held in Fraser Regional Correctional Centre. Despite being considered a danger to the public, he wasn't charged with any crime.

Immigration tribunal members have come under criticism in the past for detaining people in criminal facilities on immigration warrants. The prison system was also dealing with COVID outbreaks in October 2020.

McPhalen said there didn't appear to be any "legitimate immigration purpose" for keeping Pham detained.

The lawyer representing Pham as duty counsel agreed, saying: "It doesn't appear he's going to Vietnam whenever, so locking him up is just purely for the purposes of housekeeping — essentially."

McPhalen asked Sherwood whether there was "any point in even having him report" on a regular basis to the CBSA. Sherwood said Pham was not a flight risk.

In a statement Monday, an IRB spokesperson said the board does not generally comment on decisions, but that "Canadian law regards detention as an exceptional measure." 

The statement said members have to consider the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to determine if detention is warranted, "particularly in circumstances such as when detention is lengthy or where the prospect of removal has become remote."

Pham was released from immigration custody with no home and no job.

He was required only to inform the CBSA if he changed address, and to present himself to CBSA if asked in order to comply with his removal from Canada.

That was Oct. 14, 2020.

One month later he allegedly sexually assaulted a woman.

Sixteen months later, Noelle O'Soup, another woman and Pham were all dead.