Defense attorney Jeffrey Lawrence has his work cut out for him in his representation of Derick Laija, a now 35-year-old Ontario man who has been in custody since his arrest in the Desert Heights area north of Twentynine Palms on September 17, 2024 in the aftermath of what no one disputes was Laija’s bludgeoning murder, using a baseball bat, of 63-year-old Hadgu Abraham on Abraham’s property.
Lawrence, a San Bernardino-based attorney who has garnered a reputation as a lawyer of last resort for defendants in particularly gruesome murder cases in which convictions seemed fore-ordained, has achieved, unexpectedly favorable, or at least relatively favorable, in at least a few notable instances, for some of his clients.
The case the district attorney’s office is mounting against Laija is no less intense and shocking in its nature, circumstance and seeming brutality than any of the other cases Lawrence has been involved with.
Laija, except for having a horrific hallucinogenic experience rather than the meaningful mind manifestation he had hoped to achieve by ingesting psilocybin mushrooms in a remote setting where the tranquility of the desert and intensity of the night’s star-filled sky near the end of summer, might have returned to Ontario by last September 19 or 20 and resumed the relatively normal life he had led up to that point.
Instead, he faces a murder charge and two attempted murder charges, taken together with five charging enhancements which, upon his conviction, will result in him spending all or certainly much of the rest of his life in prison.
Derick Laija, at that time 34, had come from Ontario with a friend to Desert Heights, where they had secured what was supposed to be temporary lodging at a short term rental in the 3000 block of Bluegrass Avenue. Sometime on September 17, he had ingested psilocybin. In is believed that at some point after the 6:57 p.m. sunset that night and perhaps after the 7:21 end of twilight, Laija made his way off the property where he was staying and began roaming around the neighborhood, eventually surmounting a 6-foot-high fence to trespass onto the property at 3333 Bluegrass Avenue, where Hadgu Abraham and his wife, Freweiny Abraham, 61, had established a residence some 20 years earlier, in 2004, eight years after they had  moved with their children to the United States from Eritrea in 1996.
Upon hearing some commotion outside, Hadgu armed himself with a pellet gun and picked up a baseball bat, then went outside into the night to see what was happening.
What he saw was Laija in the Abraham family’s Suburu, which he was apparently, in his addled state, attempting to start. Hadgu confronted Laija, who emerged from the vehicle. A physical struggle ensued, according to sheriff’s department investigators, during which Laija and Abraham grappled for the bat, with its possession changing more than once.
Both Freweiny Abraham and the couple’s son, Asmerom Abraham, 31, came out of the house and Laija, who had already felled Hadgu, wielded the bat on both of them, smashing each of them in the head with it and Asmerom on his torso and legs.
As a consequence of the beating Laija had inflicted on all three, Hadgu Abraham succumbed on the spot. Asmerom and Freweiny, though injured, survived. One of them summoned the sheriff’s department at 7:49 p.m.
Arriving deputies included Christopher Jones and Jonathan Cordova.
According to Jones, while he was yet standing outside the property, he saw Laija in the Abraham home’s driveway. A moment later, he heard the metal bat being dropped.
Jones was able to gain entrance to the Abraham property by kicking the gate to the fence around the compound open. Inside, he commanded Laija to lie down on the ground, at which point the suspect, Jones said, “complied” without resisting.
Lying close by on his back, Jones said, was Hadgu Abraham, with multiple injuries to his face and head immediately apparent. Jones believed Hadgu was probably dead. Sitting on the ground next to him was Freweiny Abraham, who was unable to speak and was breathing with difficulty.
Cordova engaged with Laija, who told him that his friend had drowned in a Jacuzzi, which was apparently located at the short term rental on Bluegrass Avenue where Laija was staying. He said that he had come to the Abraham residence intending to get help, and that after jumping over the fence onto the property, he got into the Subaru, trying to start it. Laija stated that he had taken psychedelic mushrooms.
The deputies summoned ambulances for Freweimy, whose life was in danger as a result of her head injuries, and for Asmerom.
Laija was detained, and thereafter transported to the Morongo Station for further questioning.
The bat Laija used in the fatal and near fatal assaults was recovered on the Abraham property, as was a pellet gun, which was found wrapped in a gray sweatshirt near Hadgu’s feet.
Deputies held Laija long enough for the psilocybin effects to diminish, at which point detectives obtained multiple statements from him. At 6 a.m. on September 18, he was transferred to West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga where he was booked on one count of murder and two counts of attempted murder. He has been held without bail ever since.
According to one of the homicide detective assigned to the case, Nicholas Pasolak, the baseball bat was dented on the business end where it had been used hit Hadgu, Frewiny and Asmerom in the head, and the dent was coated with blood.
Freweimy was subjected to a long-term hospitalization during which she was sedated, intubated and on a ventilator within the intensive care unit, with three skull fractures, an intracerebral hemorrhage, a jaw fracture and severe damage to one of her eyes. She sustained permanent brain damage.
Asmerom was hospitalized but released relatively quickly, but was discharged with cerebral contusions, a broken arm and a dislocated knee.
Laija is being prosecuted by Deputy District Attorney Joseph Walsh and has been charged with the murder of Hadgu Abraham, which carries with it a sentencing enhancement for having used a deadly weapon in the attack. He is charged with attempted murder in the attack on Freweiny Abraham, and that charge carries with it an enhancement of having used a deadly weapon in the attack and another enhancement that the attack resulted in brain damage or paralysis in the victim. He charged with attempted murder in the attack on Asmerom Abraham, which carries with it an enhancement for using a deadly weapon in the attack as long with another enhancement for having inflicted great bodily injury on the victim.
Laija’s family retained for him Lawrence out of a belief that he will be able to work some magic in his favor.
Previously, Lawrence has scored a few victories where the circumstances seemed dire.
In a case involving charges of murder with special circumstances and three counts of robbery and three counts of carjacking; kidnapping; and torture in which the defendant was looking at a life sentence without the possiblity of parole, Lawrence obtained not guilty verdicts on all counts.
In another murder case with additional attempted murder charges, together with ; felony shooting at an inhabited dwelling; felony second degree auto burglary with a gun use allegation and felony evading arrest charges in which the accused was looking at a sentence of 44 years to life, Lawrence obtained for his client not guilty verdicts on the murder and attempted murder charges, with guilty verdicts on a misdemeanor negligent discharge of a firearm, felony auto burglary while armed and felony evading arrest charges, resulting in a sentence of 5 years 8 months.
In another case in which his client was charged with murder with a knife in which the victim was stabbed 31 times, robbery, two counts of criminal threats, plus one “strike” prior, and a 5-year prison prior entailing a possible sentence of 58 years to life in prison, Lawrence obtained a not guilty verdict on the murder rap and a substituted conviction on the lesser included offense of voluntary manslaughter alongside a guilty verdict on felony auto theft; with priors found true after a jury trial. With the defendant yet facing over 28 years in prison, Lawrence succeeded in having the trial verdict overturned for judicial error. After he lodged a motion for a new trial, Lawrence was able to negotiated a plea bargain that resulted in the judge sentencing his client to 11 years in prison.
In a murder with a knife and attempted murder in which the defendant stabbed one victim 22 times and was looking at a 41 years to life sentence, Lawrence obtained not guilty verdicts on the murder and attempted murder charges with a guilty finding on the lesser included charge of voluntary manslaughter, which resulted in a sentence of 12 years.
In a murder, assault by means likely to produce great bodily injury, elder abuse case in which the defendant had one “strike” prior for robbery, Lawrence prevented his client from getting a sentence of  52 years to life, by obtaining a verdict of guilty on the lesser included charge of involuntary manslaughter. With the accompanying assault by means likely to produce great bodily injury and elder abuse convictions and the prior “strike” found true, the doubled sentence his client received totaled 15 years.
In another murder with a knife case in which the defendant’s exposure was 26 years to life, Lawrence managed to have the murder charges dismissed in accordance with a plea bargain for 3 years in prison on a lesser included charge of voluntary manslaughter.
In the case involving Laija, however, the district attorney’s office does not seem inclined toward anything less than a long, long sentence following what it believes will be a sure conviction on all three charges – murder, attempted murder and attempted murder with all special circumstances enhancements being sustained.
At a preliminary hearing held April 23 before Judge Melissa Rodriguez, Lawrence sought to propound that there were extenuating circumstances in the matter of Laija’s deadly attack on Hadgu Abraham and the violence perpetrated on Hadgu’s wife and son in that his client was under the influence of psilocybin at the time, and that Hadgu Abraham had himself triggered the violence by arming himself and then using the baseball bat on Laija. The Abrahams, Lawrence suggested, should have called the sheriff’s department and allowed the deputies who responded to deal with the situation.
Judge Rodriguez, however, did not buy that reasoning, and she bound Laija over for trial before Judge Sarah Oliver, ruling he would have to answer the murder and attempted murder charges lodged against him.
Yesterday, May 8, Laija was arraigned before Judge Oliver. Lawrence had him enter not guilty pleas on the murder and attempted murder charges and deny all of the special circumstances that would result in sentence enhancement.
In addition to the spectacular nature of the case, its circumstance and the seriousness of the charges, Lawrence and Laija are at a serious disadvantage in other respects.
In general in San Bernardino County, verdicts tend to be lopsidedly in favor of the prosecution in matters that go to trial. In Morongo Valley, at the courthouse in Joshua Tree, the prosecution has an even better won-lost ratio than it does elsewhere in the 20,105-square mile county jurisdiction. Moreover, sentences are harsh in that courthouse, where judges who were former prosecutors have traditionally held sway.
That Judge Oliver was not a prosecutor before she was elevated to the bench, however, is of no advantage to Laija, As an attorney who was involved in civil law and issues pertaining to the government code rather than criminal law when she was a deputy county counsel with the San Bernardino County Counsel’s Office from 2018 until 2023 and a trial attorney at the Children’s Law Center in Los Angeles from 2006 to 2018, she may very well feel that she has to step up and prove herself to be as rock-ribbed and hard-nosed as those on the bench in the Morongo Basin have been traditionally, such that she will be in no position to give Laija or Lawrence any quarter.