Woman to Stand Trial in Daughter’s Death

Ignoring dozens of placard-waving supporters outside the courtroom who urged her to dismiss charges Monday, a judge ordered a Rancho Palos Verdes woman to stand trial for murder in a plunge from a 10th-floor hotel window that killed her 4-year-old daughter.

Torrance Municipal Judge Deanne Smith Myers ruled that there is enough evidence to send 30-year-old Roya Dalili to trial for murder. Her ruling came after a hearing marked by sobs from Dalili and from her mother, brother and others in the packed courtroom at each mention of the death of Dalili’s daughter, Natalie.

The judge set Superior Court arraignment for Dec. 15. Roya Dalili remains bedridden but free on her own recognizance.

She suffered a fractured pelvis and other severe injuries in the March 3 plunge from the Torrance Marriott Hotel. She was ushered into the courthouse on a gurney Monday, accompanied by two uniformed emergency medical technicians and a nurse.

The demonstration outside court marked the most visible manifestation of an increasingly vocal campaign undertaken by Dalili’s supporters. In recent weeks, they have peppered Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti’s office with letters contending that her husband abused her, that the plunge was an act of desperation, that putting her behind bars would serve no purpose and that charges ought to be dropped.

Wheeled out after the hearing ended, she was surrounded by television camera crews but declined to comment. With the cameras rolling, a friend, Raheleh Khorsan, 20, of Palos Verdes, denounced police and prosecutors as “evil and vicious” and called Roya Dalili a “sacrificial lamb.”

Other supporters jockeyed for position before the cameras with black and yellow signs proclaiming Roya Dalili’s innocence. Still others waved color pictures showing her connected to various tubes in a hospital bed.

One letter sent to the district attorney’s office on Dalili’s behalf says: “As a human being in a society [in which] killers get away from justice and manage to write a book about it (while playing golf!), I am very much interested in helping [Roya Dalili] because I strongly believe that she is a victim.”

An attorney for Roya Dalili’s husband, Nader Dalili, has flatly rejected the charge of abuse.

In court Monday, Torrance Police Det. David Nemeth said he interviewed Roya Dalili on Aug. 15. Speaking from her hospital bed, she said she recalled being depressed March 3 and wanting to kill herself. He said she “couldn’t remember anything to do with the child.”