Local News in Brief : Jury Still Out in Son’s Trial in Dad’s Murder

A jury completed its first full day of deliberation without reaching a verdict Wednesday in the trial of a young Glendale man charged with killing his father, a Filipino-American newspaper executive, and trying to disguise the slaying as a political assassination.

In closing statements on Tuesday, an attorney for Arnel Salvatierra told the jury that the killing was justifiable because Salvatierra, now 20, had been abused by his father, Oscar, and was afraid his father would kill him when he learned the youth was failing most of his classes at Glendale High School.

Arnel Salvatierra, who was 17 at the time of the 1986 killing, is being tried as an adult in Pasadena Superior Court.

His father was an executive of the San Francisco-based Philippine News, and the slaying briefly attracted international attention when it was disclosed that a day before the killing he had received a letter threatening him with death because of the newspaper’s coverage of the political turmoil that marked the final days of Ferdinand E. Marcos’ Philippine presidency.

But Arnel Salvatierra was arrested a day after the elder Salvatierra’s body was found in the bedroom of his north Glendale home. Prosecutors said he killed his father because his father tried to break off his relationship with his girlfriend, Theresa DeBurger, 18, who is awaiting trial on a charge that she was an accessory to murder.