The four gunmen were all Vietnamese immigrants. brothers Loi Khac Nguyen, 21; Pham Khac Nguyen, 19; and Long Khac Nguyen, 17; and their friend, Cuong Tran, 17. The Nguyens had fled Vietnam as a family of eight in 1979 at the peak of the first wave of Vietnamese refugees, first sailing to Malaysia and remaining anchored there for the first seven months, then waiting for four more months in an Indonesian refugee camp before they arrived in California in 1980. The entire family lived in a two-bedroom apartment from The Good Guys! store. Cuong Tran had moved with his parents into a new home in Elk Grove 15 months before the hostage crisis.