Death Penalty Sought in Killings on Mother’s Day

Prosecutors will seek the death penalty against Paul Carasi and Donna Lee, the North Hollywood couple charged with killing Carasi’s mother and a former girlfriend at Universal CityWalk on Mother’s Day, authorities said Friday.

Carasi, 30, and Lee, 44, are charged with murder and the special circumstances of multiple killings and lying in wait, making them eligible for the death penalty, said Deputy Dist. Atty. John Gilligan.

Prosecutors allege that on May 14, the two ambushed and stabbed to death Carasi’s mother, Doris Carasi, 61, and his ex-girlfriend Sonia Salinas, 29, in a parking structure at CityWalk while Salinas’ 2-year-old son sat in a nearby car. Carasi is the boy’s father.

Carasi was found at the scene smeared with blood, and said he had been knocked unconscious while the two women were attacked. Minutes later, a California Highway Patrol officer responding to a call for help at a call box on the nearby Hollywood Freeway found Lee on the shoulder of the road with knife wounds to her stomach.

Lee said she had been robbed, but the officer testified in a preliminary hearing that he found a bloodstained washcloth, bloody gloves and other evidence in the brush near Lee’s car. Prosecutors allege that Lee was injured while struggling with Salinas, and was dumping evidence over the side of the freeway when she locked herself out of her car.

Defense attorneys said the decision to seek the death penalty against the couple is unjustified.

“The investigation has lots of holes in it, and to charge these people with the death penalty is absurd, when in other cases they have decided not to use the death penalty for political reasons,” said Carasi attorney Steve Horton.

Carasi had taken his mother and Salinas to a Mother’s Day dinner that night, even though he and Salinas had split up, investigators said. A CityWalk restaurant hostess said she saw Lee walk past her restaurant looking angry the night of the killings.

A co-worker of Carasi’s testified at the preliminary hearing that Carasi told him about a month before the killings that he wanted Salinas dead because she was seeking sole custody of their son.

Carasi and Lee lived in the same small North Hollywood apartment building as Doris Carasi, who was frequently visited by Salinas.

No trial date has been set.