Father and 4 Children Die in Fire : Tragedy: Apparent murder-suicide in Anaheim followed dispute between husband and wife, authorities say.

ANAHEIM —  The badly burned bodies of a father and his four young children were found huddled together in a bedroom of their home early Monday in an apparent murder-suicide, authorities said.

The man’s estranged wife was questioned at police headquarters Monday afternoon but was not a suspect, officials said. Afterward, she left in tears accompanied by a Catholic priest and family members.

Authorities declined to speculate what happened inside the four-bedroom home just before the 1:50 a.m. fire. But relatives said the husband had been distraught because his wife was contemplating divorce when he objected to her plans to work outside the home and continue her education.

“All we know is that it was a domestic dispute and that the mother and father had been at odds for a while,” said a law enforcement official who declined to be identified. “What drives people to this rage, God only knows.”

Relatives identified the dead man as Duc Dang Luong, 37, and the children as Lynda, 10, Diana, 8, David, 6, and Joanna, 3. All five are believed to have died of smoke inhalation in the fire, which was confined to one bedroom in the tan-colored, ranch-style home in the 2400 block of West Rainbow Avenue, authorities said.

Relatives and neighbors said that Luong, a machinist, and his 35-year-old wife, Hang Le Thi Tran, had separated about a week ago and that she had taken the children with her. But neighbors reported seeing the children back at the house with their father last weekend.

Luong was deeply troubled about the imminent end to his 14-year marriage because of his wife’s determination to seek a job, said his brother, Quyen Luong of Orange. But he added that Duc Luong was a devout Catholic who loved his wife and children and could never hurt them.

“Duc called me four or five times (on Sunday) asking what he should do, that his family was breaking up and his wife was divorcing him,” said an ashen-faced Quyen Luong, who learned of his younger brother’s death when he arrived at their home Monday morning.

Quyen Luong parked his van and wandered up to the police lines about 10 a.m., waiting patiently to ask officials what had happened. When told that his brother, nieces and nephew had died, the 44-year-old man’s face turned dark and he mumbled in Vietnamese: “My God.”

“I told him that we will take care of things as they happen and not to worry,” Quyen Luong said, recalling the Sunday telephone conversations. “We told him to come over, have dinner then go to church. But he never came.”

Vietnamese community leaders deplored the deaths and said that if a marital dispute was indeed a cause, it would be an extreme example of the kind of cultural and social turmoil suffered by many Southeast Asian refugee families trying to survive in a new land.

“This is real hard on our community every time we hear of things like this,” said Nghia Tran, executive director of the Vietnamese Community of Orange County in Santa Ana, a social services agency that provides job and family counseling, and services for seniors and new refugees.

Monday morning’s fire was reported by a passerby who saw flames and knocked at a next-door neighbor’s home to telephone the Fire Department.

It took firefighters 15 minutes to extinguish the blaze in a bedroom next to the garage. Then they found the father’s body huddled over two of the children on the floor at the foot of a bed. The bodies of the other two children were found beside the bed.

Firefighters alerted the police almost immediately.

“Firemen saw some bodies inside a room and thought it suspicious that they were confined to one room, so they called us,” Police Sgt. Mike Hidalgo said.

Hidalgo said that authorities haven’t been able to determine the cause of the fire or its origin, but he added that there was “no indication of a burglary or robbery in the house.”

At the moment, Hidalgo said, police “are not looking at anybody as a suspect.”

Father Joseph Son Nguyen, who was summoned from St. Boniface Catholic Church in Anaheim to console Hang Tran and her family at the police station, said the mother was in shock.

“She cried a lot; she couldn’t coherently tell me anything,” the priest said. “I told her to just cry, that it was OK to cry.”

Nguyen said Hang Tran and her relatives all told him they didn’t know what had happened, and they still cannot believe that the four young children and their father are dead.

“There was so much confusion (at the station), so much pain,” the priest said. “All I could do was pray with them. . . . They’re heart-broken.”

Throughout the morning, shocked and curious neighbors gathered across the street from the home where the Luongs had lived since 1986.

Robert Alanis, 17, said he was awakened by pounding noises in the pre-dawn hours and came outside.

“I first saw a bunch of light, then (firefighters) crawling all over the (Luong) house, the dog was barking,” Robert said. “Stuff like this never happens around here. It’s usually real quiet.”

Next door, 8-year-old Minar Kim, who was Diana Luong’s best friend, said she saw Duc Luong driving his children away Sunday afternoon, then saw his blue Mustang return to the house about 11 p.m. She said she wasn’t sure if the children returned with their father for the night.

“I waved to Diana in the car (Sunday) but I did not get to talk to her,” Minar said as she stood with her mother on her doorstep Monday, speaking in a small, shy voice and smiling occasionally.

It was Minar’s family that was awakened by the passerby who reported the fire. The little girl then stood outside with her parents and brother watching firefighters race to put out the flames.

“I was scared,” Minar said.

Few neighbors interviewed had ever been invited into the Luong home, but most described Duc Luong and his wife as friendly.

“He would be watering the lawn . . . and he would always smile at me and wave,” said neighbor Joel Jaramillo, 18, whose 8-year-old nephew, Sammy, played with young David Luong.

Parents whose children knew the Luongs spent the day and evening trying to explain what had occurred. Beatrice Montes said her son, Victor, 7, a schoolmate of David’s, heard about the deaths and asked her why David wouldn’t be playing with him any more.

Montes said she tried her best, but “how can you explain (death) to a 7-year-old kid?”

Montes and several other parents said they hope that when school resumes on Wednesday, the school district will provide school counselors for the children.

Quyen Luong said his brother immigrated to the United States at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 as part of the first large wave of refugees. He said Duc Luong met Hang Tran in South Carolina, where they first settled, then moved to Orange County, where the couple were married in 1978.

It had been a happy union until about two weeks ago, when Duc Luong called his brother to say that he and his wife had been arguing because she wanted to go back to school and get a job. Hang Tran left the home last week and moved in with her father in Riverside County.

Vietnamese leaders say there is a growing problem of family troubles that stem directly from the changing social roles of men and women, husband and wife, parents and children who have immigrated to the United States.

“First of all, domestic disputes in our community are not supposed to be brought out in public,” said Tran of the Vietnamese Community of Orange County.

Traditionally, men are the breadwinners in Vietnamese households, and wives, if they work at all, just take on occasional odd jobs.

“Over here, roles between men and women have changed,” he said. “Men usually are not able to find comparable positions equal to their social status in Vietnam. This causes underemployment--you find professors becoming janitors or whatever. But the woman coming here sometimes finds jobs bringing in more money than the man can. This can cause problems.”

And while Vietnamese parents encourage their children to excel in school, “traditional Vietnamese women are not encouraged to pursue education or a career,” he said.

In Vietnam, Tran and others said, there were strong social, religious and family institutions to turn to in times of strife. Here, however, “economic pressures--survival--has been the primary issue in the refugee community,” Tran said. “We have not been able to deal with these secondary and tertiary problems of gang violence, youth delinquency and family trouble.”

Times staff writers Kristina Lindgren and David Reyes contributed to this article.