Throat-Slashing Victim Names Lucas as Abductor

In an emotional pretrial hearing Monday, murder suspect David Allen Lucas came face to face with a Seattle woman who identified him as the man who abducted her and who she believes slashed her throat June 9.

Jody Santiago, 30, the only woman to survive one of the four attacks with which Lucas is charged, told the court she is sure beyond any doubt that Lucas is the man who abducted her as she walked from an El Cajon nightclub.

Lucas, 29, a self-employed carpet cleaner from Spring Valley, also is charged in the Nov. 20 slaying of Anne Catherine Swanke, abducted after her car broke down in La Mesa, and the Oct. 23 killings of Rhonda Cheryl Strang, 24, of Lakeside and Amber Fisher, 3.

Lucas was arrested Dec. 16 after Santiago identified him in a police photo lineup.

Municipal Court Judge Wayne L. Peterson ruled Monday that her photo identification will be admitted as evidence when the trial begins.

Defense attorney G. Anthony Gilham had accused police of making the lineup too easy for Santiago by including a large picture of Lucas and smaller pictures of the other men. He also charged that Lucas was the only man in the lineup who looked similar to the man Santiago described as her abductor.

“To me, that individual (Lucas) was purposefully put closer to the camera so that he would stand out to Ms. Santiago,” Gilham told the court.

As Santiago began testifying about her reasons for selecting Lucas’ picture, Lucas sat quietly behind a makeshift screen constructed to shield him from Santiago’s view.

Santiago testified that the man who abducted her had bulging eyes and that Lucas was the only man in the series of pictures with bulging eyes.

“It’s like they were wrong for the sockets,” she said. “They were beady, yet bulging.”

Peterson ruled that although Lucas was the only man in the pictures with bulging eyes, all of the men, he said, had similar features.

After the judge’s ruling, Lucas was brought from behind the screen and Santiago saw him for the first time since he was arrested.

Santiago did not look directly at Lucas for the first few minutes and only when prosecuting attorney Daniel Williams asked her to describe the man who attacked her did she glance at him briefly.

Santiago testified that she was walking on a sidewalk when a man came up behind her and put a knife to her throat. The man pushed her into a waiting car, she said, and took her to a house where he tied her hands with cord and later choked her. After awhile she lost consciousness, she said.

She burst into tears as she told the court that the next thing she remembered was waking up in a hospital with relatives by her side.

She identified pictures of Lucas’ house as being the house she was taken to, but when shown pictures of his car, she said it was definitely not the one in which she was abducted.

She described that car as a dark sports car with sheepskin seat covers. It had an automatic transmission, she said, with louvers over the rear window.

Lucas’ car was a dark Datsun 280Z with sheepskin seat covers, Gilham said, but it had a four-speed transmission and did not have rear window louvers.

Santiago’s testimony is scheduled to continue today.