Boy on Trial in Death of Mother Has Brain Damage, Doctor Says

A Canoga Park teen-ager accused of strangling his mother and trying to kill his half brother suffers from brain damage that prevented him from fleeing an abusive and sexually provocative mother, a brain specialist testified Thursday.

The part of Torran Lee Meier’s brain that reasons and plans ahead is so “grossly abnormal” that the defendant could find no way out as stress built up inside him, said Dr. Donald M. Trockman, a West Hollywood psychiatrist and neurologist.

Trockman said that only one in 100,000 people could be expected to show the low level of activity that Meier’s brain displayed in a brain-wave test done with a computer.

2 Others Accused

The husky 17-year-old El Camino High School student and two friends, Richard A. Parker, 24, of Antelope Valley, and Matthew A. Jay, 18, of Woodland Hills, are on trial in Van Nuys Superior Court in the Oct. 13 strangulation death of Shirley A. Rizk, 34.

They also are accused of trying to poison and then burn to death 8-year-old Rory Rizk, Meier’s half brother, in order to silence him.

Jay and Parker are to be tried after Meier.

The three are charged with murder, attempted murder and conspiracy to murder.

Trockman said that, based on testimony over the past week from more than a dozen neighbors and relatives of the accused, Meier’s home life was “extraordinarily stressful,” particularly for a youth going through puberty.

He cited testimony that Rizk had been swimming nude with her son in their backyard pool shortly before her death, and that she frequently walked around the front yard in daylight dressed in a skimpy bikini, a see-through nightgown or a T-shirt with what one neighbor described as “obviously nothing on underneath.”

“It is especially disturbing to young males when their mother is sexually provocative,” Trockman said.

A half-dozen other witnesses also testified earlier that Meier’s mother repeatedly berated him as being a “faggot” and “not man enough” in front of school friends and neighbors.

Although his mother delivered her lengthy verbal attacks day and night in a high-pitched voice that could be heard throughout the neighborhood, Meier never replied, witnesses said.

Neighbors and relatives depicted him as a model youth, polite and well-mannered, who took care of his younger brother and suffered without complaint while his mother humiliated him.

Testimony ‘Unique’

Trockman said testimony indicated that Meier’s case was “unique in that there was an overbearing amount of criticism but no evidence of love” from the defendant’s only parent.

In the 24 hours before Rizk’s strangulation, pressures on Meier mounted to the breaking point, Trockman said, citing both court testimony and conversations he had with the defendant, who has not testified.

The psychiatrist said that, on the night before her death, Rizk kept her son awake until 5 a.m. with a prolonged verbal attack, then sent him out at 8 a.m. to mow the lawn.

He said Meier has an extreme allergic reaction to freshly mowed grass, which further impaired the youth’s ability to deal with accumulating stress.

Trockman speculated that Meier’s brain began to fail about a year before his mother’s death, citing the youth’s development of a lisp, the onset of twice-daily headaches and a drop in his grades at school, which previous witnesses said had been almost straight A’s.

Deputy Public Defender James H. Barnes is to continue questioning Trockman when the trial resumes Monday. The trial is in its fourth week.