Both sides rest in child murder trial

By: JOHN HALL - Staff Writer
Witness originally thought ejected passenger was a doll | Tuesday, September 25, 2007 12:09 AM PDT ∞

FRENCH VALLEY -- Gerryann Whitney couldn't comprehend what she was seeing.

It was Nov. 2, 2006, and she was sitting in the passenger seat of a neighbor's vehicle on the Clinton Keith Road bridge over Interstate 15.

Behind them she heard a loud explosion and "we could hear little particles hitting the car," Whitney told a Southwest Justice Center jury Monday morning.

Fighting tears, she then described what she saw in her peripheral vision.

"It was a little boy flying through the air," Whitney said. It was so surreal, she said, that she asked herself, "Why is a doll flying through the air?"

"Then I started realizing it was a little boy," she testified.

The little boy she saw was 4-year-old Javier Terrones Jr. as he was ejected from a speeding Cadillac Escalade driven by his father that morning.

Witnesses to the crash have testified that the Escalade veered across the southbound lanes of the freeway, up an embankment that runs along the bridge, then flew up in the air, crashing down on top of a Ford Explorer on the bridge.

Javier Terrones Sr., 31, is on trial for the murder of his son and the attempted murder of his now-11-year-old daughter, Bianca, who was also in the sport utility vehicle. He is also charged with assault with a deadly weapon in connection with injuries suffered by the woman in the Ford.

That's because the prosecution believes the actions of Terrones that day were intentional -- that he tried to kill himself and his two young children because of problems in his marriage.

The defense admits that his actions were negligent, but do not rise to the level of premeditated, first degree murder.

On Monday afternoon, attorneys on both sides rested their respective cases and are expected to present closing arguments to the jury today.

Jurors heard two days of testimony presented by Deputy District Attorney John Henry that ended Monday afternoon with that of the forensic pathologist who conducted the boy's autopsy.

Dr. Mark Fajardo said Javier had bleeding on his brain and died from blunt-force trauma to his head. The boy also had multiple bruises and cuts as well as fractures to both thigh bones and his left arm.

Some jurors appeared to cringe a bit when shown a photograph taken of Javier before the autopsy. It shows his tiny, mangled left arm and the intense bruising to his face and head.

Javier Terrones wiped his eyes with a tissue and didn't seem to want to look at the screen in the courtroom that showed the photo of his dead son.

The driver of a gasoline tanker testified Monday that he spoke with Terrones just after the crash.

Javier Jimenez said he was headed across the Clinton Keith bridge to deliver the fuel to a Chevron station when he saw a big cloud of dirt or dust in front of him. When the dust cleared, "I saw an SUV on top of another truck," he said.

He went to check on the drivers and the man in the SUV, whom he identified in the courtroom as Terrones, told him something twice in Spanish.

"He said, 'Please tell my wife to forgive me,'" Jimenez said.

Jimenez said he then saw a little girl in the SUV. The prosecutor asked him about what the girl said.

"She said, "If I die, can you please tell my mom I love her?'" Jimenez answered.

She also asked him if her little brother was OK, he said. Looking in the SUV for the boy, Jimenez said he couldn't find him.

He turned around and saw something down the bridge, about two feet from the back of his tanker truck.

The prosecutor asked Jimenez what he saw when he ran to the rear of his tanker. Jimenez paused as he fought back his emotions.

"Sorry, I have a little boy," Jimenez said. "He was laying there, coughing up blood. ... He was in bad shape."

Before defense attorney Dario Bejarano rested his case without calling any witnesses, he asked Judge Rodney Walker -- outside the presence of the jury -- to dismiss the murder and attempted murder counts, saying the evidence did not prove those crimes.

Bejarano told the judge that he believes that, while his client did drive recklessly and possibly with some criminal neglect, it wasn't murder.

He attacked the testimony of Terrones' wife, Zorayta, who was on the witness stand Thursday, saying she has a motive to say what she did.

Zorayta Terrones told jurors that her husband had previously threatened to drive her and the children off Ortega Highway after an argument the couple had while at a swap meet in Los Angeles County.

"She doesn't like him very much, primarily because he killed her child," Bejarano said, telling the judge the woman has a reason to be vindictive.

In his counter argument to the judge, the prosecutor said the strongest evidence that this was deliberate and premeditated is that Terrones called his wife before the fatal crash and told her she was going to regret what would happen for the rest of her life.

Henry also said there was no evidence that Terrones ever tried to slow or stop before flying up the embankment, nor was there anything mechanically wrong with the Escalade, according to testimony from a Riverside County sheriff's sergeant.

The judge denied the defense attorney's request, saying he believes there is evidence of intent by Terrones.

Walker also said, based on the testimony about driving the family off Ortega Highway, that the Nov. 2, 2006, incident wasn't the first time Terrones had the idea of using a vehicle to kill himself, the children and possibly his wife.

After closing arguments from both attorneys today, the jurors will begin deliberating the case.

Terrones faces a possible sentence of life in prison if convicted as charged.

-- Contact staff writer John Hall at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2628, or jhall@californian.com.

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