Inset: Huy "Max" Nguyen interviewed by law enforcement officers after arriving at Inova Mount Vernon Hospital in Fairfax County, Virginia (Fairfax County Police Department/WRC/YouTube). Inset: Alison "Kate" Laporta (Brinsfield Funeral Home & Crematory).
A man will spend decades in a Virginia prison for shooting his girlfriend before driving her to a hospital and lying about what happened, according to authorities.
Huy "Max" Nguyen has been sentenced to 23 years in prison for the second-degree murder of 38-year-old Alison "Kate" Laporta, Washington, D.C., NBC affiliate WRC reported. The defendant was 47 years old when he was convicted in September 2025 of murder and using a firearm in the commission of a felony.
On April 17, 2024, Laporta was shot in her upper body, the Fairfax County Police Department said at the time. Nguyen took her to Inova Mount Vernon Hospital, and she was later transferred to another hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Just before midnight on that day, officers spoke with Nguyen at Inova Mount Vernon Hospital. He told investigators that he and Laporta were in a parking lot in nearby Annandale when a random bullet hit her, prosecutors said, per the TV station.
However, as they investigated, "detectives disproved that allegation." Investigators "determined Nguyen shot" his girlfriend inside a vehicle and drove her to the hospital. They found the firearm near his home in Lorton, around 20 miles southwest of Washington, D.C.
Nguyen is said to have admitted the parking lot story was a lie, changing his story to say Laporta tried to shoot at him and then shot herself. His defense team even introduced hundreds of pages of medical records from two years before the shooting, when Laporta allegedly had a mental health crisis and was admitted to a hospital.
Prosecutors reportedly said the since-convicted defendant told more than 400 lies.
Prosecutors called men to the witness stand who were with the couple on the day Laporta was shot. The witnesses said Nguyen and Laporta had been fighting at a pool hall and that the suspect had made threatening statements.
"The only way this argument ends is with a bullet," one witness recalled Nguyen as saying.
"I'm going to shoot this girl," Nguyen allegedly added that day, as Law&Crime previously reported.
Still, despite Nguyen's conviction and sentencing, Laporta's family sought more.
"I think he should have gotten the full 40 and plus some," said Laporta's daughter, Katlin Lasky, referencing the maximum of 40 years the defendant faced.
"[He] murdered my daughter," said Tim Pounsberry, Laporta's father, per WRC, expressing how the murder brought "absolute destruction" to the family.