Prosecutors said Huy “Max” Nguyen changed his story repeatedly after Alison “Kate” LaPorta was shot in a vehicle and driven to a hospital in Fairfax County.

FAIRFAX, Va. — A Fairfax County judge sentenced Huy “Max” Nguyen to 23 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of second-degree murder and a firearm charge in the 2024 shooting death of his girlfriend, Alison “Kate” LaPorta.

The sentence closes a major stage in a case that turned on shifting accounts, witness testimony and forensic evidence. Prosecutors said Nguyen lied repeatedly after LaPorta was shot on April 17, 2024, then drove her to Inova Mount Vernon Hospital and tried to blame the wound on anything but himself. The killing left LaPorta’s family grieving the loss of a 38-year-old mother of two, while the court fight centered on whether she had been murdered or had shot herself during an argument.

Police were called to the hospital around 11:35 p.m. after Nguyen arrived with LaPorta, who had been shot in the upper body. She was later transferred to another hospital, where she died. Authorities said Nguyen first told officers that the couple had been in a parking lot in Annandale when a random bullet struck her. Investigators later said the pair had never been there. As the case moved forward, prosecutors said Nguyen changed his account again and claimed LaPorta had fired at him and then turned the gun on herself. In local TV reporting after the sentencing, video showed him speaking with officers soon after he reached the hospital, his hands stained with blood as he tried to explain what had happened. At trial, prosecutors argued the first story fell apart quickly, and they told jurors the later versions were part of the same effort to avoid blame.

The government’s case relied on both testimony and physical evidence. Fairfax County prosecutors said Nguyen and LaPorta had been arguing earlier that evening at Revolution Darts & Billiards. Men who were with the couple that day testified that the fight had grown tense and that Nguyen made threats before the shooting. One witness said Nguyen remarked that the argument would end “with a bullet.” Another recalled him saying he was going to shoot LaPorta. Those statements became central to the state’s argument that the killing was not an accident and not a suicide. Prosecutors also pointed to evidence from the car itself. According to the Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office, the bullet’s path and a photograph showing the gun’s imprint on LaPorta’s seatbelt supported the conclusion that Nguyen fired the shot while both were seated in her car. Detectives also recovered the firearm near Nguyen’s home in Lorton after the shooting.

The case drew added attention because of the defense strategy and the way prosecutors described Nguyen’s statements. His lawyers argued that LaPorta shot herself and introduced hundreds of pages of medical records from about two years before the killing, when she had been hospitalized during what reporting described as a mental health crisis. That claim was rejected by the jury in September 2025, but it remained a painful point for LaPorta’s relatives, who said in interviews that the trial reopened deeply personal parts of her life. Family members also pointed to what they saw as warning signs before the shooting. In earlier local reporting, LaPorta’s sister shared text messages sent about an hour before Nguyen brought her to the hospital. In one message sent at 10:21 p.m., LaPorta wrote that she was scared and said Nguyen had already fired near her head several times. Police said the exact location of the shooting inside Fairfax County was not immediately clear in the first hours of the investigation, even though detectives later concluded it happened inside a vehicle.

The legal path stretched from the arrest in April 2024 to conviction in September 2025 and sentencing on Feb. 13, 2026. Nguyen, who was 47 when he was charged and 48 when he was convicted, faced up to 40 years in prison on the second-degree murder count and three more years on the firearm count. A Fairfax County jury found him guilty on both counts after hearing the competing theories and reviewing the evidence from the vehicle, the gun and his statements to police. Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano said after the verdict that LaPorta should still be alive and that Nguyen’s efforts to lie about the shooting did not spare him from accountability. At sentencing, prosecutors and LaPorta’s relatives urged the court to impose the maximum term. Instead, the judge set the sentence at 23 years. No further court date was announced in the immediate reporting after the hearing, and any appeal timetable was not detailed there.

For LaPorta’s family, the sentence did little to soften the loss. Relatives told local reporters they were relieved Nguyen was going to prison, but they also said the punishment fell short of what they believed the case deserved. Her daughter, Katlin Lasky, said no verdict or sentence could bring her mother back. Her father, Tim Pounsberry, described the killing as a source of “absolute destruction” for the family and said he believed Nguyen should have received more time. Their comments stood in contrast with the procedural finality of the hearing, where years, counts and sentencing ranges marked the end of a criminal case on paper. Outside that frame, the family’s memories focused on LaPorta as a mother, daughter and friend whose absence still dominates daily life. The courtroom outcome settled Nguyen’s punishment for now, but it did not settle the grief described by those who knew her best.

Nguyen now stands convicted and sentenced in the killing of LaPorta, with the 23-year prison term marking the latest and most concrete milestone in the case since the April 2024 shooting and his September 2025 conviction.