Crime & Safety

Dela Rosa Portrayed As Conflicted, Complicated Woman

Trial for grandmother accused of throwing her 2-year-old granddaughter over a Tysons Corner Center walkway continues

Carmela dela Rosa's mug shot was taken a few hours after she picked up her 2-year-old granddaughter, Angelyn Ogdoc, last Nov. 29 and dropped the toddler over a 44-foot pedestrian foot bridge at Tysons Corner Center.

It was a cold evening, dark outside when mall surveillance cameras captured dela Rosa tossing the girl to the ground. She was questioned by Fairfax County Police detectives at the McLean precinct and transferred to the Adult Detention Center. And it wasn't long before that mug shot was plastered on television screens, newspapers and media websites across the region.

But the 51-year-old dela Rosa who sat in a courtroom on the fifth floor of the Fairfax County Courthouse last week looked like a shell of the woman staring out from the November mug shot. Her once-long black hair has been cropped short. Silver bangs hang over her face; pounds have fallen off her frame during her 10-month incarceration.

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During her testimony Thursday, Susan Jacobson, a psychiatric nurse practitioner who treated dela Rosa several times in 2010, said she didn't recognize her former patient

"That lady has lost a lot of weight," Jacobson said on the witness stand.

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Last Monday, when the trial began, dela Rosa pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Her defense team says dela Rosa had a psychotic break with reality when she lifted her granddaughter over the railing last November. Prosecutors say she was merely a depressed woman who was "bent on evil."

There is no question, friends, family and doctors said in court last week, dela Rosa is a troubled woman. But whether or not she understood the "nature, character and consequence of her actions" and if she was able to distinguish right from wrong at the time of the crime is still unclear.

This week's testimony will focus on dela Rosa's mental illness, with several more medical experts scheduled to testify. The jury is expected to deliver a verdict late this week.

Last week, though, jurors listened to personal testimony from her husband, daughter, son-in-law, cousins and close family friends, who portrayed dela Rosa as a complicated woman.

They talked about her love for Walt Disney. She bought Disney merchandise, and wanted to move to Orlando with her family because she thought Walt Disney World was the happiest place on earth. She even took a part-time job at the Disney Store in Tysons Corner Center.

The native of the Philippines was also described as the life of the party, someone who always remembered to call friends and family members on their birthdays. She kept the dates marked on a magnetic calendar on the refrigerator, her husband, Leandro dela Rosa, said during his testimony. For awhile, she was an active Facebook user.

But she also had a tendency to spend beyond the family's means. She worried about finding work. She was Catholic and insisted her two children attend Catholic school. She was a stern disciplinarian.

In 2000, when her father died unexpectedly during a routine hospital visit, something in dela Rosa broke, her family said. She was a "daddy's girl" and, though her father lived in the Philippines, she felt especially connected to him.

She became depressed and despondent. Her husband said she started locking herself in the bedroom and sleeping for hours. She sought isolation and avoided social engagement.

"She (was) not the same Carmela. No more stories. No more laughing," her friend, Susan Bugay, said on the witness stand.

"There was no closure," dela Rosa told Fairfax Police Detective Stephen Needles in the video of her interrogation shortly after the Tysons Corner Center incident.

Recognizing a problem, dela Rosa sought professional help and was prescribed Prozac, a drug commonly used to treat depression. Leandro dela Rosa said his wife responded well to the treatment.

Her depression would ebb and flow throughout the decade that followed. She was diagnosed with recurrent major depressive disorder because of the episodic nature of her mental illness. Dela Rosa would become depressed, seek treatment, take Prozac and emerge from the episode. Dr. Sally McFarland, dela's Rosa primary care physician, said she prescribed the drug to the defendant two or three times over the past six years.

One of these episodes occurred in 2008, when dela Rosa found out her daughter, Kat Ogdoc, was pregnant.

"She was so angry," said Rebecca Russ, dela Rosa's sister, who testified in court last week. "She found out her unmarried daughter was six months pregnant."

Bugay remembers when dela Rosa suspected, but had not confirmed, the pregnancy.

"She said, 'If she's pregnant, I think I'm going to kill myself,'" Bugay recalled.

But when the baby came, witnesses testified the grandmother genuinely loved her. Though Kat Ogdoc, dela Rosa's daughter and Angelyn Ogdoc's mother, testified her mother only held the baby when it was necessary and she tended to be standoffish, others described Angelyn as the light of dela Rosa's life. She called Angelyn "lovey." She babysat. She brought back baby clothes for the infant from the Philippines.

Dela Rosa's depression returned with a vengeance during the summer of 2010. The air conditioning system in the family's Fairfax home broke and the dela Rosas had to borrow several thousand dollars from the Russ family to fix it. Dela Rosa had trouble finding a job. She tried to commit suicide four different times that fall. She retreated from friends and family on Facebook and asked for their prayers. She learned her brother died the week before Thanksgiving.

This trial has not answered what ultimately drove dela Rosa to throw her granddaughter off a bridge last November, but this week could shed some light on her state of mind.

"What I don't understand is why tonight?" Detective Needles asked dela Rosa during the interrogation at the McLean precinct.

"I don't know. Maybe because I haven't taken my medication in a while," she said. "I think I just lost it."

To read complete trial coverage from last week, click Stay tuned to Patch this week for daily updates on the case.


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