MANHATTAN (CN) — David Thai, the convicted leader of a notorious Vietnamese street gang that once wreaked havoc in downtown New York City, asked a federal appeals panel on Tuesday to reconsider his bid for an early release from his life sentences on convictions tied to his leadership of the Born to Kill street gang from 1988 to 1991.
Thai’s leadership of the violent Chinatown gang ended with his arrest in 1991, followed by his conviction the following year in Brooklyn federal court for conspiring and committing murder, attempted murder, and a string of robberies and extortions of restaurant owners and other neighborhood merchants.
At 36, he was sentenced to two concurrent terms of life imprisonment, plus concurrent terms of 10 and 20 years’ imprisonment…