LAS VEGAS (AP) - Friends of a slain woman said they were upset that a Las Vegas judge postponed arraignment Wednesday for an ailing and unemployed chef who described for police in bloody detail how he hacked his Philippine wife to death last week in their apartment kitchen.
Elizabeth Fisher, a licensed practical nurse and former co-worker of Daisy Casalta Dahan, held a photo of the 28-year-old Dahan and said outside court that she believed Richard Magdayo Dahan is fluent in English and doesn’t need a Tagalog translator to understand the charges against him.
Richard Dahan appeared confused in court, and Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Deborah Lippis postponed his initial appearance on a first-degree murder charge until Thursday, so that a Tagalog language interpreter can be present.
The judge also appointed Deputy Clark County Public Defender Edward Kane to represent Dahan unless he hires his own lawyer. Kane declined immediate comment outside court.
Fisher and several other friends and co-workers told reporters they feared Daisy Dahan was in a dangerously abusive marriage before she was slain last Friday.
Fisher said friends at the Life Care Center of Las Vegas were trying to raise money to send Daisy Dahan’s body home to Davao City and burial in the Philippine city of Bohol.
Las Vegas police say Richard Dahan turned himself in at a police station a few hours after the slaying and provided a grim account of attacking his wife with a serrated chef knife, a meat cleaver and filet knife.
Richard Dahan appeared in court in shackles, with a heavy bandage covering his right forearm, hand and ring and pinky fingers. Police had said he had severe cuts on his hands and a broken finger when he surrendered.
He told investigators he was a kidney transplant recipient in failing health, and recently lost his job as a chef at a Las Vegas Strip casino resort.
Dahan told police that Daisy Dahan wanted a divorce after a little more than two years of marriage, but he felt that was unacceptable because his parents stayed married until his father died.
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