Suspect in Woman’s Slaying to Stand Trial : * Crime: Alleged gunman faces nine felony counts, including murder, attempted murder and robbery.

A 22-year-old man has been ordered to stand trial on charges that he murdered one woman, wounded another and robbed several other people during a crime spree in Pasadena’s northeast neighborhoods in October.

After a hearing in Pasadena Municipal Court, Rashidia Keyatch Jake was ordered held Monday on nine felony counts, including murder, attempted murder and robbery.

The charges stem from three incidents in which residents who had driven up to their homes at night were confronted by a gunman who demanded their purses or wallets.

Jake, a former Harbor City resident who lived in Pasadena last fall, was arrested in November after his fingerprint turned up on a stolen wallet discarded after one of the robberies. Authorities believe he is the man who fatally shot hospital pharmacist Jolene Hori, 34, during an Oct. 18 holdup outside her house in Hastings Ranch.

“It’s probably the most pitifully sad waste of a human being that I’ve had a chance to witness in this court,” Judge Judson W. Morris Jr. said of the Hori slaying.

Noting that Hori had been shot in the back, Morris said, “talk about the ultimate in cowardice.”

The judge ordered Jake to appear at a Jan. 21 arraignment in Pasadena Superior Court, then added: “My prayers go with you, young man. You’re a lost soul.”

But Jake’s attorney, Allen L. Martin, questioned whether the crime spree victims had identified the right man. Their descriptions of the gunman’s teeth and facial hair did not always match his client’s appearance, the lawyer said.

“There are a number of events charged, but there are also a significant number of discrepancies,” Martin said. “My client strongly asserts his innocence.”

The lawyer’s comments came after three of the crime victims provided dramatic testimony about how they were accosted. All three said Jake was the man who threatened them with a chrome-plated handgun.

Magda Said testified that she and her 8-year-old son arrived at Hori’s house the night of Oct. 18 after they had dined with the pharmacist. Hori was opening the front door when Said heard a shot and turned around, she testified.

“I saw a person with a gun,” she said. “He grabbed my purse, and I was trying not to let go.”

After the purse strap broke and the man fled, Said told her son to have Hori call the police.

“That’s when he said she was dead,” the woman testified. “She had been shot in her left shoulder. She was bleeding from there and from her mouth.”

Investigators say Hori may have been shot because she had seen the gunman and was hurrying inside to call for help.

Teresita Barcelona began crying in court as she described her Oct. 26 confrontation with an armed robber in the driveway of her home on Casa Grande Street.

“I said, ‘No, please don’t shoot me,’ ” she recalled. But she added, “He grabbed my purse and shot me.”

The woman said a bullet struck her in the cheek. The wound required surgery, and bullet fragments remain in her face, she said.

Charles Barcelona said he was opening the garage door at the time his wife was attacked. He testified that the robber fired several shots at him that missed.

“I kept asking him, ‘What are you doing?’ ” the witness recalled.

Pasadena Police Detective Gary P. Capuano testified that he interviewed two other men who were robbed Oct. 20 outside a home on East Orange Grove Boulevard. He said a wallet taken in that holdup was found six hours later in the street, two blocks from Jake’s home.

Martin, the defense attorney, said a fingerprint found on a card in that wallet did not prove that Jake had committed the robbery. The attorney said it only showed his client had touched it within six hours of the holdup.

But the judge said the print, combined with the descriptions and a common pattern in the robberies, were sufficient to order Jake to stand trial on all charges.

“I am pleased with the outcome,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Deborah Kass said. “I think the evidence is going to prove us out.”

The prosecutor said investigators are still trying to identify a second man believed to have accompanied Jake, or driven a getaway car, during the robberies.