‘Didn’t Hit That Lady on Purpose,’ Murder Suspect Says

Danny David Ornelas, accused by police of intentionally running down and killing a Balboa Peninsula woman, admitted Wednesday that he was drunk at the time of last week’s crash but denied that he purposely tried to hit the mother of three.

In an interview with The Times at the Orange County Jail, the 19-year-old Huntington Park man said his passenger was holding a video camera that may have been turned on. But he insisted that they were not trying to film the crash last Thursday afternoon when he veered into 37-year-old Debbie Killelea, knocking her 50 feet and briefly pinning her against a brick wall.

“I did not film that lady. I didn’t hit that lady on purpose,” Ornelas said Wednesday evening in a visitor’s booth at the jail in Santa Ana.

Killelea, who had worked with her neighbors trying to get the city to control speeders on the Balboa Peninsula, was hit as she walked with her two young sons behind their home on East Ocean Boulevard, police said. The boys vaulted over the wall and escaped injury. Killelea was rushed to a hospital but died later that night during surgery.

Ornelas has been charged with murder because witnesses told police the driver appeared to purposely turn toward the woman as she tried to dodge his car.

But the young man said Wednesday night, “It wasn’t intentional.” He said he spent time in the jail chapel Wednesday, praying for Killelea and her family.

“The father (at Killelea’s funeral Tuesday) said pray for the wife, pray for the person who hit her,” Ornelas said, his voice faltering.

“We’re both suffering. They’re suffering and I am suffering. This is hard.”

Ornelas is scheduled to be formally arraigned today in Harbor Municipal Court. His attorney said he will seek a reduction in Ornelas’ $250,000 bail, set by a a judge during a hearing Tuesday.

His lawyer, Ralph Bencangey of Beverly Hills, said after the interview that his client “was very depressed about the whole thing. . . . This was a kid who had never been in trouble his whole life . . . there is remorse, no question.”

Police have said that Killelea was walking with her sons about 5:15 p.m. when a sedan came speeding toward them. She pushed her two boys, 10 and 6, to safety before trying to flag down the motorist to slow the car. Instead, police said, the car hit her, then rolled over and rammed into the rear of a garage several houses away. The driver climbed out of the overturned car and fled on foot. Ornelas was captured by police a short distance away.

During a half-hour conversation Wednesday night, an articulate but visibly shaken Ornelas winced as some of the news accounts were read to him. He described some of the events preceding the crash but declined to discuss others, saying, “That would be negative for me.”

Ornelas said he is a college student majoring in photography and film at a Los Angeles school that he would not identify. He said he had returned recently from a two-month vacation in Mexico and looked up his former roommate and another friend. He said the trio headed for Newport Beach last Thursday.

They spent the day of the accident “body surfing at the beach” and drinking, he said.

“I’m athletic. I don’t drink every day,” he said. But last Thursday, he said, he and his friends were drinking strong rum and beer--”Bacardi 151 rum and chasing it down with Old English.”

“I overdid it a little bit, and the sun kind of made me dizzy,” Ornelas said.

As they sat on the beach watching the girls, his friend John--he would not give his last name--”got the idea of filming the girls at the beach and the surf, so we went back to the car.” Police would not identify John further because he is a juvenile.

The video camera was in the parked car, which belonged to the third friend, George, who was arrested long after the crash for being drunk on the beach. “I didn’t even plan to drive (the car),” Ornelas said.

Ornelas would not discuss why he got behind the wheel.

Police said witnesses reported seeing the 1984 Nissan 200SX speeding down the alley behind Ocean Boulevard and that it appeared to aim for Killelea as she waved at it to slow down.

Ornelas, who said he was graduated from a Catholic high school in Downey that he also would not name, grew tearful as the grim police account of the deadly crash was presented to him.

He said he had hoped to find a job through his college as “a dockworker or something by the marina . . . near Torrance.”

He said he had worked selling “health products” door-to-door with his father, but declined to name the company because he wanted to “protect” his father and those who work for the firm.

Ornelas said that after obtaining a college degree, he hopes to work either as a photographer or as a psychologist.

“Filming is just a step beyond,” Ornelas said. “But no, I did not film that lady. I didn’t hit that lady on purpose.”

“I’ve been a born-again Christian for about four years,” the soft-spoken man said. “But I guess I played too many games with God, and it caught up. . . . I am now a criminal in the law’s eyes. But my past and my future will never indicate it.”

Ornelas was asked if there was anything he would like to express to Killelea’s family.

“I have been praying for them, and I don’t know the grief they feel. But I know the grief that I feel,” he said, stammering and searching for words.

“And when this is all over, I’ll try to help them in any way I can.”