2 Face Trial in Antelope Valley Slaying

Two Lancaster youths were ordered Friday to stand trial on charges they raped and murdered a 19-year-old Antelope Valley woman last January, stabbing her 34 times and leaving her bleeding in the desert.

After a nearly four-hour preliminary hearing, Antelope Municipal Judge Ian Grant ordered David W. Smith, 20, and David A. Roe, 17, held without bail. Grant set arraignment for Dec. 4 in Lancaster Superior Court.

The day after the Jan. 11 assault, Roe confessed to sheriff’s deputies and led them to the body of Tami Koby in a dirt culvert near Avenue J and 60th Street East.

In testimony Friday, a sheriff’s homicide investigator related Smith’s story that he had killed Koby because of fear she would report him for stabbing her once during an argument just before her death.

Smith had just been released from jail for a prior offense, friends told deputies.

According to sheriff’s homicide investigator John Gentzvein, Roe said Koby was stabbed because Smith feared she would report him for raping her earlier that night. A Juvenile Court judge earlier this year ruled that Roe should be tried as an adult because of the seriousness of the crime.

Because Koby’s death occurred in connection with an alleged rape, Smith could face life in prison without parole or the death penalty. Roe, as a minor, could receive at most a life sentence.

According to court records and testimony in the case, Smith told deputies that Koby voluntarily had oral sex with him, but he then forced her at knifepoint to orally copulate Roe while Smith raped her in the car. Smith said they later argued when she complained that he was driving too fast and he stabbed her, Gentzvein said.