Defendant in Girl’s Death Erupts in Courtroom : Trial: The man accused of murdering Nadia Puente becomes enraged while listening to a tape of his confession, leaping up and overturning furniture.

SANTA ANA —  A man accused of abducting and killing a 9-year-old Santa Ana girl went on a courtroom rampage Thursday as the prosecution played a tape recording of his murder confession.

Richard Lucio DeHoyos, 34, overturned the defense and prosecution tables and knocked over a chair before he was wrestled to the floor by bailiffs. The courtroom was cleared during the scuffle, and one of the jurors said she twisted her ankle trying to leave.

“The court simply can’t permit him to display his emotions that way for whatever reason,” Superior Court Judge Everett W. Dickey told attorneys after the commotion. “There’s too much of a risk of people getting hurt.”

A contrite DeHoyos later apologized to the judge.

“I won’t let it happen again,” he said out of the jury’s presence.

The outburst was triggered by the playing of a police tape recording in which DeHoyos admits that he enticed Nadia Puente into his car, drove the fourth-grader to a motel, then drowned her in a bathtub, sexually molested her and dumped her body in Griffith Park on March 20, 1989.

DeHoyos, who said he briefly lived in Westminster and Santa Ana, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to charges of murder, rape, kidnaping and child molestation. He faces a possible death sentence if convicted.

Milton C. Grimes, DeHoyos’ attorney, said he thought his client’s disruption is “one of the symptoms of his illness.” Earlier in the weeklong trial, the defendant had barked and growled at a photographer.

Grimes, however, declined to elaborate on DeHoyos’ condition, saying only that the defendant has “serious mental problems.”

DeHoyos started getting noticeably upset during a portion of the recording when he stopped denying his involvement in the slaying and divulged to investigators what he thought occurred.

According to the recording, made after his arrest in San Antonio, Tex., on April 1, 1989, DeHoyos said he lured Nadia into the car by saying he was a teacher and needed her assistance in carrying some books to his motel room. Once she was inside the room, DeHoyos said, Nadia “started screaming like she was afraid, ‘Can I use the phone.’ I go, ‘No, the phone is not working.’

” . . . She freaked me out. . . . I got her in the bathtub and, I’m sorry to say, I drowned her. I got carried away when she freaked me out,” he said on the tape. “ . . . I just drowned her.”

Later in the interview, DeHoyos said he “was scared. I had killed a little girl, innocent. Beautiful little thing. . . . I didn’t do it intentionally. It wasn’t a murder that I had planned. It was just one of those things.”

After he killed her, DeHoyos told investigators, he sexually assaulted her. Then, he said, he wrapped her body in a bedspread, put it a trash can and dumped it in Griffith Park.

The prosecution contends that Nadia was still alive when DeHoyos sexually attacked her.

Midway through the recording, which jurors followed with an 81-page transcript, DeHoyos started to weep. Grimes asked a bailiff to give his client some tissues. A few moments later, DeHoyos exploded.

First, he yanked off his clip-on tie and tossed it at his attorney. Then, he pushed a pitcher of water and papers off the table, bolted up from his chair and started turning over furniture.

The court recessed for about 30 minutes after the incident. When court resumed, Dickey asked the jurors if they could put the outburst out of their minds and still give DeHoyos a fair trial. They all said they could.

The trial is expected to resume on Monday.