"Grandmother cites jealousy in killing child" September 28, 2011|Associated Press
FAIRFAX, Va. - A grandmother who threw her 2-year-old granddaughter to her death from a sixth-floor walkway at Virginia’s largest shopping mall told detectives in a taped confession that she felt unloved by her family and jealous of the attention her granddaughter received.
More than anything, Carmela dela Rosa told detectives, she was angry at her son-in-law James Ogdoc for taking her daughter away from her, and saw killing the infant as a way to get back at him, according to the confession. The tape was played to jurors yesterday at the woman’s murder trial.
“I just saw James through her, through the baby,’’ dela Rosa said in the hour-long videotaped confession to a Fairfax police detective. “I thought about James and I threw her.’’
Dela Rosa, 50, of Fairfax, acknowledges that she threw her granddaughter, 2-year-old Angelyn Ogdoc, from an elevated pedestrian bridge at Tysons Corner Center last November, in the midst of the busy holiday shopping season. She has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and her lawyers argue that her diagnosed depression was so severe that she could not distinguish right from wrong.
In her confession, though, dela Rosa explicitly states that what she did was wrong. “I did a terrible thing,’’ she told the detectives. She also admits that her intent at the time was to kill Angelyn and that she hatched the plan several minutes before carrying it out.
She told the detectives that her anger boiled over at her family during a visit to the mall’s food court. She first became angry that her husband, son, and daughter were speaking to each other in a sort of silent code that excluded her that day.
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