Chester County DA will seek death penalty in slaying of two women, unborn child
Chester County DA will seek death penalty in slaying of two women, unborn child
WEST CHESTER — The Chester County District Attorney’s Office will seek the death penalty against a man accused of murdering two women with whom he had been romantically involved, including one who was pregnant with his child, allegedly shooting them while his 22-month-old son sat in the back of a car the women had been in.
Defendant Mamadou Kallie was notified of the prosecution’s intention to make the case against him one that would be punishable by death should he be found guilty at trial of first-degree murder during his formal arraignment on Thursday. He had no outward display of emotion as a county court administrator calmly read the death penalty notifications required under state law.
The prosecution will seek the death penalty for each of the two women’s murders. Kallie could thus conceivably face two such penalties — something it is believed only one other defendant in a Chester County capital case has faced in recent history.
Kallie, 23, of Coatesville, is accused of the murders of Kimberly Ortiz Zayas, 21 — who was five months pregnant at the time of her death — and Tiara Rodriguez-Diaz, 20 — whose 22-month-old son that she shared with Kallie was in the rear seat of her car when she was shot. Both women lived in Coatesville.
In order to obtain the death penalty for a first-degree murder conviction, prosecutors in Pennsylvania must show a judge or jury hearing the case that certain aggravating factors in the case — circumstances that make a killing more heinous — outweigh any mitigating factors — circumstances that favor a defendant. Specifically, prosecutors have 18 specific aggravating factors on which they can rely to seek the death penalty.
In the case of Ortiz Zayas, those aggravating factors presented at the arraignment include that Kallie put others in addition to her at “grave risk of death” in her homicide; that her murder was one of two or more that he committed at the time; that she was pregnant at the time and that he knew it; and that he was under court order to have no criminal contact with her.
That final factor stems from the probationary sentence Kallie was serving for assaulting Ortiz-Zayas during a 2019 episode of domestic violence at her home on Victoria Drive, in which he threatened her, and threw her to the ground, grabbed her hair, and dragged her to a wooded area near her home.
In the case of Rodriguez-Diaz, the aggravating factors include the same “grave risk of death” and the commission of another homicide at the time of her murder.
Michelle Bjork, a spokeswoman for the District Attorney’s Office, declined to comment on the death penalty notification. Chester County Public Defender Nathan Schenker, whose office is representing Kallie, also declined comment on Thursday.
Kallie is charged with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of third-degree murder, murder of an unborn child, aggravated assault, robbery of a motor vehicle, fleeing and eluding police, endangering the welfare of a child, and related charges.
Mugshot of Mamadou Kallie
Mamadou Kallie
Kallie has pleaded not guilty. He is being held without bail in Chester County Prison, where he appeared for the arraignment with one of his attorneys, Assistant Public Defender David Miller.
Police were called to a house in the 300-block of Mount Pleasant Street in Coatesville around 9:20 p.m. on May 29 where Kallie and Rodriguez-Diaz had apparently been arguing. Rodriguez-Diaz had reportedly become friendly with Ortiz-Zayas in the months since Kallie’s arrest on charges that he had assaulted her.
At the time, Rodriguez-Diaz told Corporal Christopher McCarthy that everything was fine between them, police said. Kallie, agitated over police putting his son in Rodriguez-Diaz’s car, got into a black Ford Edge. Rodriguez-Diaz drove off with her child in the back seat, and police cleared the scene.
Thirty minutes later, Valley police responded to the report of an accident and of shots fired in the 300 block of East Glencrest Road in Valley, less than a mile from the site where the domestic disturbance had taken place, and not far away from where Ortiz-Zayas lived. A witness told police she heard at least nine shots fired, and another witness reported seeing a black SUV flee the scene.
Police found Rodriquez-Diaz in the driver’s seat of her Toyota Corolla with multiple gunshot wounds. She was taken to Paoli Hospital, where she was pronounced dead shortly after arrival. Investigators discovered a trail of blood from the car’s front passenger door to Ortiz-Zayas’s body lying on the side of the road. She was pronounced dead at the scene. She is the woman who was five months pregnant.
Later, investigators were able to find a video of Kallie confronting the two women outside Ortiz-Zayas’s home and then chasing after the Toyota in his Ford. They were also able to recover a video from a neighbor’s home that captured the sound of 10 gunshots fired on East Glencrest Road.
Kallie allegedly drove from the scene of the shooting to a friend’s home in the city and asked him for a ride, telling him that he had just shot and killed a girl. While driving through back roads towards West Chester in the man’s Infiniti, Kallie allegedly pointed a gun at his friend and ordered him out of the car.
At 10:45 p.m., West Chester police responded to the report of a carjacking at Strasburg and Telegraph roads in East Bradford, where they found Kallie’s friend, who told them of the theft of his car. A police pursuit involving multiple police units, where they attempted to stop the Infiniti using sirens, lights, and stop sticks, ensued, and Kallie was ultimately stopped on Route 30 in Caln.
After a 30-minute standoff during which Kallie put his gun to his neck, he got out of the car holding a gun to himself. Police successfully negotiated a peaceful surrender, and he was taken into custody at 11:41 p.m.
Pennsylvania hasn’t executed someone since 1999. Gov. Tom Wolf imposed a moratorium on the death penalty in 2015 but prosecutors can still seek the death penalty.
It is rare for those accused of first-degree murder in Chester County to face the death penalty. The last time that a death penalty case was sought in the county was 2014 when then-District Attorney Thomas Hogan filed capital cases against Gary Lee Fellenbaum and Jillian Tait in the torture and beating death of Tait’s 3-year-old son, “Scotty” McMillan.
Hogan withdrew the death penalty against the two in exchange for guilty pleas — first-degree murder for Fellenbaum and third-degree murder and conspiracy for Tait. Fellenbaum is serving a life sentence in state prison, while Tait is serving a 42-to-94-year sentence.
The last time a county jury imposed the death penalty was in 2012, when a panel hearing the case of a Coatesville man, Laquanta Chapman, imposed the penalty for the grisly slaying of a city teenager. That decision was later overturned on appeal, as Chapman’s attorney, Assistant Public Defender P.J. Redmond, successfully argued that the aggravating circumstance cited by the prosecution had not been properly applied.
In addition, a jury made up of residents of the county imposed the death penalty in 2017 on a man described as a domestic terrorist in the 2014 ambush slaying of a state trooper and the wounding of another. The case was tried in Pike County, where the crime occurred.
The last capital case defendant to face multiple counts of murder in Chester County was Robert Hughes IV, who was sentenced to death for the January 1989 slaying of two employees at a McDonald’s restaurant in West Goshen, manager Jean Reider and worker Charles Hegarty. He is currently housed at the state correctional facility in Collegeville, Montgomery County.
To contact staff writer Michael P. Rellahan call 610-696-1544.
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