Boy Suspected of Strangling Mother to Be Tried as Adult

A Juvenile Court judge ruled Tuesday that a Canoga Park teen-ager should be prosecuted as an adult for allegedly strangling his mother Oct. 13, putting her body in a car with his 7-year-old half-brother and pushing the car off a Malibu cliff.

Pasadena Juvenile Court Judge Eric E. Younger concluded a two-day hearing by saying that the nature of the crimes and the “criminal sophistication” of the defendant, Torran Lee Meier, 16, made it inappropriate to hold the trial in Juvenile Court.

“The acts in this case are toward the brutal and bizarre and toward the terrifying end of the homicide spectrum,” Younger said, after noting that Meier is charged, among other things, with attempting to kill his half-brother, Rory Rizk, with rat poison. Rory survived both the poison and the car’s plunge off a 60-foot cliff.

If convicted of murder as an adult, Meier could receive a maximum of 25 years to life in prison. A murder conviction in Juvenile Court could have resulted at the most in confinement in a California Youth Authority facility until age 25.

Meier could be arraigned as an adult on charges of murder and attempted murder as early as Thursday, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Detective Rene LaPorte said. Meier pleaded not guilty in Juvenile Court.

No Comment on Plea

Deputy Public Defender James Barnes, who represents Meier, declined to say how Meier would plead when arraigned.

Evidence at the hearing indicated that the youth had admitted killing his mother to sheriff’s deputies. Part of the youth’s taped statement, in which he speaks of growing up in the shadow of a domineering and abusive mother, was played in court Tuesday.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Jerry J. Bowes said prosecutors will now combine Meier’s case with those of two alleged adult accomplices, Richard Parker, 23, of Antelope Valley, and Matthew Jay, 18, of Woodland Hills. They are accused of helping Meier strangle his mother, Shirley Rizk, 34, at the home she shared with Meier and Rory in Canoga Park. A preliminary hearing in their cases is scheduled Jan. 15.

In their effort to convince Younger that Meier should be tried as a juvenile, his attorneys put on the witness stand relatives and neighbors who described the abusive treatment of Meier by his mother.

After hearing testimony that Shirley Rizk constantly screamed at her oldest son, the judge said he believed Rizk was “an extraordinarily difficult, frightening and frightened human being.”

Aldo Pumariega, an academic counselor from whom Meier sought help when he was at El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills, described Meier as an intelligent youth who had come to him with descriptions of his difficult life at home. “He wanted to be free,” Pumariega said.

An official of the California Youth Authority testified that he thought the authority could rehabilitate Meier.

Donald M. Trockman, a forensic psychiatrist, attributed the youth’s behavior to hysteria brought on by his relationship with his mother and to an “underlying hormonal imbalance.” Trockman said that, after interviewing Meier, he did not consider him “criminally sophisticated,” one of the legal criteria that determine whether a juvenile is eligible for the adult system.

Reacting to Younger’s decision, James P. McGarry, another public defender representing Meier, said he believed the allegations involving Rory had led the judge to remove the case from Juvenile Court. “The involvement of the brother has made it difficult for the court system to handle it in terms of the press and public opinion,” McGarry said.