Prosecutors said Duy Nguyen planned for weeks before shooting her former boyfriend six times outside his Longmont apartment.

LONGMONT, Colo. — A 26-year-old Colorado woman has been sentenced to 40 years in prison after a jury found she tried to kill her former boyfriend in a point-blank shooting outside his apartment complex in Longmont, prosecutors said.

The sentence closes a case that began with a February 2025 parking lot attack and moved through a yearlong investigation, trial and sentencing in Boulder County. Prosecutors said Duy Nguyen lay in wait for Chance Cardona after their relationship ended, then shot him at least six times as he got out of his car. Cardona survived and called 911, turning what could have been a homicide case into an attempted murder prosecution with decades of prison time at stake.

According to Boulder County prosecutors, the shooting happened just after 8:45 p.m. on Feb. 5, 2025, after Cardona drove home from the Colorado Mountain Kava Bar to the Green Meadows apartment complex in Longmont. As soon as he parked and opened the car door, gunfire erupted. Investigators said he was hit in the face, shoulder, arm and thigh. Even with those injuries, he managed to call 911 and report that he had been shot. Officers responding to the complex arrived to find him wounded but alive. In later court filings and public statements, prosecutors said the attack was carried out at point-blank range and involved at least six shots. The victim did not immediately name his shooter with certainty, but officers said he gave a partial identification that pointed them toward Nguyen, his former girlfriend. Their relationship had ended months before the attack, setting the stage for an investigation that quickly focused on someone the victim already feared could be responsible.

Police said the case came together through physical evidence and technology. Longmont investigators collected shell casings at the scene and reviewed automatic license plate reader images that showed a vehicle tied to Nguyen leaving the area, according to the Boulder County District Attorney’s Office. Detectives then obtained a search warrant for her home. There, investigators said, they recovered the gun used in the shooting along with electronic devices that showed she had been planning the attack for weeks. Prosecutors have not publicly detailed everything found on those devices, but they said the contents showed advance planning rather than a spontaneous confrontation. That detail became central to the state’s effort to prove an attempted murder charge. The public record also leaves some things unresolved. Authorities have not released a detailed public account of Nguyen’s movements in the hours before the shooting, whether she acted entirely alone in preparing for it, or the full motive beyond the breakup. What is known is that investigators described the evidence as strong enough to tie the weapon, the vehicle and the planning directly to her.

The case moved from investigation to trial later in 2025, when Boulder County prosecutors presented it as a deliberate ambush by a former partner. A jury convicted Nguyen in December of criminal attempt to commit first-degree murder, first-degree assault and two crimes of violence sentence enhancers, according to county officials. The conviction marked a major step because the attempted murder count carried the heaviest sentencing exposure. Prosecutors said the applicable prison range on that charge was 16 to 48 years, while first-degree assault carried a range of 10 to 32 years. The facts outlined by the district attorney’s office gave jurors a straightforward timeline: Cardona came home, opened his door and was shot repeatedly; investigators traced the case through shell casings, vehicle images and the firearm; and electronic evidence showed weeks of planning. District Attorney Michael Dougherty said after the verdict that the investigation by Longmont police and the evidence they developed were key to solving what he called a terrible shooting. Longmont Police Chief David Moore said the victim had been ambushed and suffered multiple gunshot wounds, and he credited officers, detectives and prosecutors for the result.

At sentencing on Feb. 13, 2026, the court imposed a 40-year term in the Colorado Department of Corrections on the attempted murder conviction and a 20-year term on the assault conviction. Those sentences are to run concurrently, meaning the 40-year term controls the total time to be served. The sentence put Nguyen near the upper end of the range available on the attempted murder count, a sign of how seriously the court viewed the shooting and the evidence of planning. Boulder County Deputy District Attorney Brad Sherman said after sentencing that the case was in court as an attempted murder matter rather than a murder case only because the victim survived “by sheer luck” after being shot six times, including once in the face. That statement captured the prosecution’s argument from start to finish: the outcome turned not on a lack of intent, but on Cardona’s survival. No public filing reviewed in the reporting on the case indicated that additional charges remained pending after sentencing, and the verdict and sentence appear to resolve the trial court phase unless an appeal is filed.

The case also drew attention because it combined the private history of a failed relationship with a methodical trail of evidence that prosecutors said showed planning over time. Domestic violence cases often unfold behind closed doors, with warning signs known only to the people involved. In this case, the violence broke into public view in an apartment complex parking area, leaving behind shell casings, surveillance leads and a victim who survived long enough to speak to police. Cardona’s survival gave investigators a starting point, but it was the records gathered afterward that helped build the full narrative presented in court. Officials have not released broader details about any prior reports between the pair, and there is no public timeline spelling out every interaction after the breakup. Still, the prosecution’s account turned the case from a late-night shooting into a documented record of a relationship that ended months earlier and, investigators said, escalated into planned gun violence. For local authorities, the case became both a violent crime prosecution and a test of how quickly scene evidence and reader data could identify a suspect.

Even in official statements, the human toll remained close to the surface. Cardona survived wounds to multiple parts of his body after, prosecutors said, he was attacked in the ordinary moment of coming home for the night. Moore, the Longmont police chief, said the outcome would help the victim begin the healing process. Sherman said the prison sentence reflected Nguyen’s culpability and would hopefully bring some measure of justice and closure. Those remarks did not erase the unanswered personal questions that often remain after a case like this, including how a past relationship reached such violence and what recovery will look like for the victim in the years ahead. But by the time of sentencing, the courtroom focus had narrowed to what the jury found and what the judge decided: a planned shooting, a surviving victim, and a prison term long enough to shape the rest of the defendant’s adult life. The public record now places the legal case in its closing stage, with any next move likely to come through post-conviction filings or an appeal.

The case now stands with a guilty verdict entered, a 40-year prison sentence imposed and no further trial court hearings publicly announced. The next milestone would likely be any notice of appeal filed in the Colorado court system after the February 2026 sentencing.