Brothers plead guilty to gun-related charges
Published 4:56 pm Saturday, May 30, 2015
Two brothers arrested for shooting guns in northwest Austin have pleaded guilty to related crimes Friday in Mower County District Court.
Thavinh Kullavongsa, 32, pleaded guilty to possessing guns as a felon as part of a plea agreement. Phouminh Kullavongsa, 35, pleaded guilty to fifth-degree drug possession. Thavinh also pleaded guilty to one count of possessing child pornography in a related case.
Police arrested the two shortly after 7 a.m. Dec. 18 after witnesses reported gunshots coming from the basement of an apartment home at the 1400 block of Eighth Avenue Northwest.
Officers heard firecrackers coming from the area and found the suspects in the basement. The two were arrested after police found shell casings in the driveway and a stairwell.
Police found four guns in their home: a Kahr .45-caliber pistol, ATI .22-caliber pistol, Glock 9mm pistol and a New England Arms 12-gauge shotgun. Two glass methamphetamine pipes, a scale, some fireworks and about 402 grams of marijuana were also found.
After their arrests, a worker hired to clean out the apartment turned on a desktop computer in Thavinh’s room only to see a folder on the computer’s desktop with images of young girls. Deputies later took the desktop computer, a laptop, five hard drives, and various memory cards into evidence.
Law enforcement found one folder containing 23 videos of child pornography. Another computer drive had 33 videos.
Thavinh told police his brother and another man had recently moved into the apartment but did nothing with the computers. He allegedly admitted to looking at the videos and said he was thinking about deleting them.
Phouminh was previously convicted of fifth-degree drug crime in 2006, and third-degree drug crime in 2007 and 2009. Thavinh was convicted of second-degree assault in 2004 and terroristic threats in 2006.