Man accused of killing son tried earlier, transcript says

A Fullerton man who police say confessed to drowning his 4-year-old son also told a detective that nine months earlier he had tried to kill the boy and himself by setting his car on fire but was interrupted by a California Highway Patrol officer, according to newly unsealed grand jury transcripts.

Gideon Walter Omondi, who is charged with murder in the death of his son in September, revealed the plan during an interview with a Fullerton detective, according to grand jury testimony released Friday at the request of The Times and the Orange County Register.

Omondi pulled his beat-up BMW to the side of Interstate 5 in Kern County in January 2006, after leaving a custody hearing at which his wife was present, the records show.

Omondi doused the inside of the trunk with gasoline and told his son, Richard, to get in, climbing in after him. The lid was down but not latched.

Richard asked him what they were doing. “We’re going to die,” Omondi said, according to the transcripts. “Daddy, I don’t want to die,” his son responded.

At that moment, a CHP officer patrolling the rural stretch of highway north of Bakersfield opened the unlatched trunk, thinking the car was abandoned. Omondi climbed out, telling the officer he pulled over to take a nap during a trip to San Francisco to see friends.

Omondi, 35, has been in custody since he walked into the Fullerton police station and allegedly told police he had just drowned his son in the bathtub.

His alleged confession of the earlier plan to kill himself and his son led the grand jury to indict him for attempted murder, in addition to the murder charge.

Omondi’s attorneys had opposed opening the grand jury records partially because they revealed the previous incident.

Fullerton Police Det. Mike Kendrick testified during the secret grand jury proceedings that Omondi told him about the near-torching incident during his initial interview, as Omondi explained that he had considered killing his son prior to the drowning.

Omondi told Kendrick that a custody dispute with his wife had angered and frustrated him, and he felt he was being treated unfairly, according to the detective’s testimony. He was unhappy that he was ordered to pay child support and that everyone seemed to believe his wife’s side of the story, the records show.

Documents in their divorce case show that Omondi and his wife, Hellen, both natives of Kenya, described their marriage as “turbulent,” each accusing the other of domestic violence.

CHP Officer Brent McElmurry testified that when he came across Omondi’s car, he thought it might be abandoned or stolen. He lifted the trunk after spotting two pairs of shoes, one adult size and one much smaller, as he bent down to read the license plate number to a dispatcher.

“I thought that was extremely odd,” he said.

Omondi told McElmurry they were sleeping in the trunk, rather than in the back of the BMW, because it was the middle of the day and they were trying to find a dark place. McElmurry smelled gasoline inside the trunk but didn’t find it suspicious because as a child his family had a similar car, and faulty vent hoses caused it to reek of gasoline.

McElmurry testified that he saw no signs the boy had been abused, and he questioned him to make sure Omondi was his father. He felt satisfied when the boy provided his name, his father’s name and corroborated the story that they were headed to the Bay Area to see friends.

He testified that he warned Omondi of the dangers of pulling over to sleep on the highway, as he has other motorists who had done the same. He didn’t see any reason to ticket him, or report him to social services.

“Hindsight being 20/20, I’m sure that there’s a lot of things that we wished that the officer had done,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Steve McGreevy told grand jurors. “That didn’t happen. But because he didn’t do those certain things...it doesn’t negate the attempted murder aspect of this case.”

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christine.hanley@latimes.com