A jury must decide which Carmela Dela Rosa threw her 2-year-old granddaughter to her death from a mall walkway: a spiteful woman who was seeking revenge or one who was psychotic after years of mental illness.
Those were the two versions prosecutors and defense attorneys depicted Monday during the first day of Dela Rosa’s trial in Fairfax County Circuit Court. Dela Rosa, 50, is charged with murder in the Nov. 29, 2010, death of Angelyn Ogdoc, who died after being thrown from a sixth-floor walkway at the Tysons Corner Center.
Dela Rosa is presenting an insanity defense.
The Fairfax woman’s mental-health troubles didn’t contribute to Angelyn’s death, said Ray Morrogh, the Fairfax County commonwealth’s attorney. He described Dela Rosa as a “selfish person” and “bent on evil.”
Morrogh said Dela Rosa was “furious” when she learned her college-student daughter was pregnant, and resented the child and her daughter’s husband. Dela Rosa went to the mall for dinner with her daughter, granddaughter and other relatives, and while inside, decided to throw Angelyn from the walkway, Morrogh said.
“She did it out of anger, hatred and revenge,” he told the jury. Morrogh’s statements were the first time anyone has offered an explanation for why Dela Rosa – whom neighbors described after the incident as a doting grandmother – killed the child.
But Dela Rosa’s actions that evening were the product of a “twisted way of thinking because of her mental illness,” her attorney, public defender Dawn Butorac, said in her opening statement.
Butorac said Dela Rosa had suffered from major depressive disorder since the death of her father in 1999, and repeatedly attempted suicide last year: by swallowing pills, cutting her wrists and driving her car off the road.
“She was experiencing psychotic thoughts,” Butorac said. When Dela Rosa wasn’t in the middle of a depressive episode, she said, she was a loving person who threw potlucks and remembered birthdays.
Butorac acknowledged that Dela Rosa wasn’t happy when her daughter became pregnant, but said her client eventually “moved on” and “loved Angelyn.”
The jury on Monday also heard from prosecutors’ first witness: Monique Cox, who was walking from a ground-level parking lot into the mall when she saw what appeared to be a child’s coat falling from above.
“As the jacket came down, it hit a small tree, and that’s when we saw a face,” she said. Cox said the toddler then landed face-first on the ground.
Jury selection lasted nearly five-and-a-half hours, as attorneys questioned prospective jurors about their views of psychiatric illness, mental health professionals, child victims and suicide attempts. Nine men and five women were ultimately chosen to serve on the panel, which includes the 12 jurors who will decide the case and two alternates.
