Driver to Be Tried on Murder Charge in Woman’s Death

A Municipal Court judge Thursday ordered Danny David Ornelas to stand trial on charges of murdering a Newport Beach woman in a drunk-driving incident--but slashed his bail from $250,000 to $100,000, angering the victim’s relatives.

Ornelas’ lawyer and family refused to say whether the 19-year-old Huntington Park man, who has been held in Orange County Jail since the fatal Sept. 1 hit-and-run in a Balboa Peninsula alley, will be able to post the lowered bail.

The bail reduction sparked occasionally unrestrained anger and disappointment Thursday from the friends and family of Debbie Killelea on the second and final day of a preliminary hearing for Ornelas, who is accused of intentionally running down the 37-year-old mother of three with a car.

Shouts From Courtroom

“For God’s sake, what are you talking about!” an enraged Dennis Killelea, brother-in-law of the victim, shouted from the audience of the Newport Beach courtroom as Ornelas’ attorney appealed for a lower bail.

Killelea was soon quieted, and Harbor Municipal Judge Frances Munoz granted the reduced bail over the prosecutor’s objection. Citing a standard $25,000 bail for vehicular manslaughter, the judge said Ornelas’ bail should range somewhere between that figure and a standard $250,000 bail for a non-vehicular murder.

Visibly distressed after the hearing, Killelea said: “I’m outraged by the bail reduction. Period. It should have been higher if anything. . . . I’m just in total disbelief.”

At the same time, Munoz refused a request by prosecutors to compel Times reporter Nancy Wride to turn over unpublished notes and material obtained from Ornelas during an interview at Orange County Jail in Santa Ana shortly after his arrest.

The prosecutor had sought notes and testimony about the jailhouse interview beyond what was published. But the judge sided with an attorney for The Times, who asserted that the First Amendment and California’s shield law protects journalists from having to disclose unpublished information.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard M. King did succeed in convincing Munoz that there is probable cause to try Ornelas in Superior Court on murder charges.

The prosecutor closed his presentation of evidence in the preliminary hearing with his most scathing verbal indictment to date of Ornelas.

Police said Ornelas, driving with a blood-alcohol level nearly twice the legal level of intoxication, veered down a Newport Beach alley faster than 50 m.p.h. and hit Killelea. The incident was recorded in a dramatic videotape taken by a passenger riding with Ornelas in the car.

Prosecutor King said, “He goes after her (with the car) and gives her the death penalty.”

King suggested that Ornelas acted out of anger or frustration after Killelea, standing toward the side of the alley, placed her hands defiantly on her hips in a gesture apparently intended to slow the car down.

“Just moments after the victim put her hands on her hips, you have a swerve to the right,” King said. “He went to scare (Killelea). He turned the vehicle to the right, and he hit her. And that’s murder.”

Defense attorney Ralph Becangey of Beverly Hills countered that Killelea, herself, contributed to the incident by moving “deliberately in the center” of the alley.

“This is clearly not a murder and shouldn’t be hung around my client’s neck,” Becangey said.

The defense attorney had argued successfully that Ornelas’ bail should be reduced, in part because the defendant has no criminal record.

But King responded that Ornelas fled the scene after the incident and might run again if freed on bail.

Noting that Ornelas failed to appear as scheduled in traffic court several years ago, King said: “$100,000 is a very cheap price to pay when he is facing 25 years to life.”