Houston nurse accused of staging husband's suicide in shooting death

A 29-year-old registered nurse accused in the shooting death of her husband last week broke down in court Monday after seeing her family in the gallery.

Tu Thien Huynh is accused of using a shotgun to kill her husband, Steven Hafer, on Thursday then calling 911 and reporting it as a suicide, prosecutors said in court.

Investigators became suspicious when Huynh kept changing her story about the shooting, prosecutors said. The shotgun had apparently been wiped clean and the trajectory did not match a self-inflicted wound.

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The husband was found shot in the bedroom, according to the medical examiner's office.

Huynh later admitted to having an affair with an ex-boyfriend, prosecutors said in court.

State District Judge Randy Roll ruled that Huynh has to surrender her passport if she makes her $50,000 bail. Prosecutors said she is a registered nurse who began working at the cancer center after coming to the United States in 2004.

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Family who were in court for the hearing declined to comment afterward, but friends of the slain man took to social media to pour out their grief.

"He was an awesome, awesome, awesome guy," Josh Becker, 34, told the Chronicle on Monday.

"He was just loaded with integrity and morals and amazingness. He was the type of guy I would gladly have my daughters marry."

Huynh and Hafer married three years ago and had a 2-year-old daughter. The civil engineer was a hard worker who valued family and fatherhood, friends said.

"For the first several years of his career he was working 70 hours a week - and he did it all for the family," Becker said. "He lived for being in that role."

But the now-apparent marital problems stayed hidden even from Hafer's closest friends and family. Becker, who'd met Huynh when the young couple visited his home in Florida, said she seemed compassionate and "almost angel-like."

"Nothing would give a clue that something like this would happen," he said.

Huynh was arrested Thursday after police were called to the home in the 10400 block of Newpark Drive near Goodrum about 4:10 p.m., according to the Houston Police Department.

She had worked previously at MD Anderson Cancer Center but has not been employed there since 2015.

brian.rogers@chron.com

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