Hieu Huynh holds up a photograph of Nahn Lee, his brother. Lee was brutally attacked with a pipe July 17. Lee says the man who allegedly carried out the attack is the same man charged in connection with four separate attacks the same week.
Tanya Babbar/Staff Writer
The brother of Nhan Le, who was left on on life support after he was brutally beaten outside of a Dunkin Donuts store this month, stood in front of a Northwest Houston hospital Friday and demanded justice through tears.
“I want to raise my voice so it won’t happen again,” Hieu Huynh, 35, said of the attack on his brother, who is at HCA Houston Healthcare Northwest.
Joshua McDaniel, 28, is accused of beating Le with a pipe on July 17 outside of the restaurant in northwest Harris County.
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McDaniel is charged with aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury in connection to the attack on Le, court records show.
Le was not immediately named in the complaint against McDaniel because investigators could not identify him at the time of the attack, Thomas Gilliland, a spokesperson for the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, said Monday. If Le is taken off life support, McDaniel could be charged with murder, Gilliland said.
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McDaniel, who is referred to as “Big Boy” in criminal complaints, is accused of attacking several other people the same week Le was hospitalized.
Authorities allege McDaniel attacked a second man with a blunt object on July 17, the same day Le was attacked, the records state. He is also accused of threatening another man with a machete and punching a woman the day prior, court records show.
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McDaniel’s bail was set at $250,000 each for three felony aggravated assault charges and $5,000 for a misdemeanor assault charge in the case of the woman who was punched, according to the court documents.
“If they committed a crime, they have to pay … This is way too much,” Huynh said Friday before breaking into tears. Huynh is asking the public to donate to a GoFundMe for his brother’s medical expenses. As of Monday, the fundraiser had reached nearly $60,000 in donations.
Assault charge dismissed in November
A Harris County prosecutor moved to dismiss a charge against McDaniel when he was accused of assaulting an elderly man in November, a fact that has drawn criticism from crime victim advocates.
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The judge in November ordered the Harris County Jail to release McDaniel so he could be referred to the Harris Center’s Judge Ed Emmett Mental Health Diversion Center.
“The bloodshed will continue as long as the court system shows mercy to these individuals,” Houston crime victim advocate April Aguirre said Friday, standing next to Huynh.
The Harris County District Attorney’s Office said “prosecutors have to try cases based on the evidence they have, and far too often prosecuting without material witnesses is exceptionally challenging,” in a statement provided by Rafael LeMaitre, director of communications.
The criminal justice system is “ill equipped to provide meaningful mental health treatment to potential offenders until it is too late,” the statement read. “For generations, lawmakers and politicians have focused too much on mass incarceration and not enough on how to prevent crimes like these from happening in the first place by intervening with the right kind of treatment early.”
McDaniel has a criminal history dating back to 2015, when he took a plea deal in an assault on a family member at 17, court records show. In 2018, McDaniel pleaded guilty to a felony robbery in which he hit a man in the face, court records show. McDaniel was sentenced to two years in a state prison under a plea agreement, court records show.
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Huynh described his Nhan Le as “really gentle and polite.”
The two are one year apart in age, and have throughout their life gotten into a lot of “fun and fights” with each other, Huynh said Friday morning, with a faint smile.
“He never commit(ed) any crime,” Huynh said of his brother. “I want to end this … We should not be busy on this kind of stuff.”
