
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, July 12, 1990                   TAG: 9007120581
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B2   EDITION: EVENING  
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MAN ACCUSED IN SLAYINGS TO UNDERGO MENTAL TESTS

A Roanoke man accused of killing his landlord with his bare hands has a history of uncontrollable temper tantrums so severe that he goes into seizures and remembers nothing afterward, his attorney said today.

Herbert Arthur Otey Jr., 30, may have experienced such a seizure when he allegedly strangled Girish Desai, 46, in a vacant apartment of Twin Oaks Apartments on Liberty Road Northwest, according to Assistant Public Defender John Varney.

At a hearing today in Roanoke Circuit Court, Judge Diane Strickland granted Varney's request that Otey receive a psychiatric evaluation.

Strickland said she was ordering the mental testing because the question of Otey's sanity will be a "significant factor in his defense."

Ever since he was 8 or 9, Otey has suffered from fits of rage that led to seizures. Varney said the seizures began with an incident that made Otey angry and ended with him falling to the ground, shaking uncontrollably and biting his tongue.

Afterward, Otey would remember the incident that provoked the tantrum but could recall nothing after he blacked out, Varney said.

Such a scenario could have occurred when Otey and Desai met in a vacant apartment March 21 and discussed Otey's failure to pay rent and his impending eviction from the complex.

"There was a dispute in this case, after which he blacked out," Varney said. "Which seems to fall in the pattern . . . of the seizures that Mr. Otey has had."

Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Melvin Hill did not oppose the request for a psychiatric evaluation. However, Hill said Otey's actions "do not indicate that he was suffering from a mental disease at the time" of the killing.

Witnesses testified at an earlier preliminary hearing that Otey had been smoking crack cocaine at the time of the killing and was "extremely high."

Desai owned the apartment complex and worked as a real estate agent. His body was found by his wife lying on a kitchen floor of a vacant apartment two doors down from Otey's apartment the morning of March 22.

Otey was arrested later in the day after he told his brother that he "snapped" the night Desai was choked to death.

Otey has received medical attention for his problems twice in the past, in 1972 and again in 1980, Varney said. The latest mental evaluation will seek to determine if Otey was sane at the time of the killing. Varney said today that he has no questions about his client's current mental ability to stand trial.

Otey, who did not testify today, was returned to the city jail after the hearing.

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