Thirteen-year-old Christina Nguyen, away at a summer school for gifted and talented students, has not cried for her father.

For the time being, she'll remain unaware he was slain along with two others at a Tantalus lookout in one of O'ahu's most violent crimes in recent years.

"I haven't told her because it is a tragic incident, and I'm not sure she can handle it by herself, so we wait until she comes back," said her mother, Cynthia Lai, speaking yesterday by phone from the family's apartment in the Kalakaua Housing complex. Lai said that for now, she will grieve with her son, Victor, 17.

Her daughter, who will be a freshman at McKinley High School this fall, is in Thousand Oaks, Calif., participating in a program sponsored by Johns Hopkins University.

Manh Nguyen, a taxi driver, was killed Thursday by a single gunshot to the head. His body was found next to those of Jason and Colleen Takamori, a couple who were parked next to Nguyen's taxi van at the lookout.

"I will always remember my husband as a good man, a kind man who is always happy. I am the worrying type, and he always reassured me, and he always cheered me up when I needed him, and he is always there for his children."

Authorities say Nguyen and the Takamoris died at the hand of Adam Mau-Goffredo, 23, who was indicted by an O'ahu grand jury yesterday on charges that city prosecutors say amounted to "mass murder." The victims appeared to have been killed "execution-style" with shots to the head, prosecutors said.

Yesterday, Cynthia Lai, who kept her maiden name after the couple wed in 1987, and their son remembered their husband and father as the hard-working, ever-smiling cornerstone of their small, close-knit family.

"I looked up to him because he had to work so hard in life, that I just want to be a good son to him and show him that I was proud of him," Victor Nguyen said yesterday. "He was really, really happy that day (I graduated from McKinley High School). He always made jokes and never got down. I just need to take it a day at a time, and I'm going to focus on school and work my way through college. I have to work hard and study hard now."

Victor Nguyen now spends hours staring at the walls of his bedroom. He said he is trying to be strong for his mother and wants to embody the benevolent, hard-working values by which his father had lived.

Manh Nguyen, 50, came to this country with nothing and drove his taxi six days a week while preaching hard work and the importance of education to his two children, whom he regarded as his greatest accomplishments, his wife said.

He took Saturdays off so he could eat pho with his family before going shopping. Once all the essentials were bought, the family would go to the Ala Moana tennis courts at night to play matches with friends.

Cynthia Lai has tried to absorb her husband's death, but emotion overtakes her and she breaks down crying, she said. She misses the long conversations they had every night on their couch, and she wishes she could see Manh Nguyen with their children again.

The couple, both natives of Vietnam, were going to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary in January and had recently watched their son graduate from McKinley with honors.

Lai, a native of the Cholon neighborhood in Saigon, met Manh Nguyen in 1981, when they both worked at Jack in the Box on Kalakaua Avenue. He had recently immigrated to Hawai'i from Nhatrang, Vietnam, and was thrilled to meet a woman from his homeland.

The couple dated for six years before marrying in 1987.

Manh Nguyen quit working at the restaurant and started as a taxi driver in 1984, immediately falling in love with his job, his wife said.

"He was so happy to go to work every day," she said. "He had a chance to meet a lot of people and talk to his friends, who he joked around with a lot. He would talk about his daughter and his son (to passengers) and how proud he is that they go to a good school."

This summer, their son earned several scholarships from local companies that will allow him to attend Saint Martin University in Washington state, where he will study computer science, he said.

In addition to classroom accomplishments, Victor Nguyen was a member of McKinley's tennis and soft tennis teams and was named the 2005 O'ahu Interscholastic Association East Division soft tennis player of the year.

After graduation, Victor Nguyen wants to land a job designing software for a company in Hawai'i so that he can be close to his family for a while before he pursues his graduate studies. The rest of his life will be dedicated to ensuring his father's legacy lives and that his lessons are passed on.

"My dad was good to all of us. He was a good man, a good father and a good husband," he said.

Manh Nguyen will be memorialized at 9 a.m. on July 17 at Borthwick Mortuary.

In addition to his wife and two children, he is survived by two younger sisters, Cuc Nguyen, 46, and Tho Nguyen, 44, both of Nhatrang.

Reach Peter Boylan at pboylan@honoluluadvertiser.com.