Trial Set for Man Charged With Killing Pedestrian

The murder trial of a 19-year-old Huntington Park man accused of running down and killing a Balboa Park woman with his car last summer will begin Wednesday in Superior Court in Westminster, it was decided Thursday.

Danny David Ornelas, traveling at reported speeds of more than 50 m.p.h., is charged with hitting Debbie Killelea, 37, with his Nissan 200SX Sept. 1 near her home as her two young sons looked on in horror.

Killelea, who had tried to get city planners to place speed bumps in the peninsula alley, was thrown about 50 feet and pinned briefly against a brick wall. Ornelas, who had been drinking that afternoon with friends on the beach, had a blood-alcohol level reported at twice the legal limit at the time of the accident.

The accident was captured in a dramatic--though sometimes blurred--videotape filmed by a passenger in Ornelas’ car.

Prosecutors, seeking a murder conviction, contend that the videotape shows that Ornelas swerved toward Killelea at the last instant in an apparent response to her gesturing for him to slow down. But Ornelas’ attorney maintains that the same tape shows that Killelea contributed to the accident by moving toward the center of the alley as the car approached.

Ornelas, in an interview in the County Courthouse before the assignment of his trial date, said: “There’s no telling how this is all going to turn out. It’s all in God’s hands now.”

The young man said that in the months since he was released from custody on $100,000 bail, he has been working part time and is looking to return to school. He dropped out of Cerritos College, where he had been studying psychology and photography, after his arrest. “This has tormented my whole family and stopped all my future plans,” he said.

On the accident, Ornelas said: “I try not to think about it, but the pain will never go away. If there’s anything I can do when this is all over to make (Killelea’s) kids understand, and her husband, I’ll do it--go out and warn kids about the consequences (of drinking and driving), whatever.”

Some of Killelea’s relatives and neighbors packed the municipal courtroom where Ornelas was given a preliminary hearing last fall, lashing out at Ornelas. They expressed particular frustration when Ornelas’ bail was slashed from $250,000 to $100,000.

Ornelas will be tried before Superior Court Judge Luis A. Cardenas in Westminster. That decision Thursday follows a decision by Deputy Dist. Atty. Thomas Goethals to reject a courtroom assignment Wednesday to Judge Leonard H. McBride.