Local News in Brief : Judge Testifies on Attack

A judge, kidnaped and attacked while she was jogging near her Tarzana home two years ago, identified her alleged attacker in court, saying she couldn’t erase his face from her memory.

The defendant, Stephen A. Weible, 28, of Tarzana is charged with kidnaping and assault with intent to commit rape in the Jan. 4, 1986, incident.

Leslie Dunn, a municipal judge in Van Nuys, identified Weible at his Los Angeles Superior Court trial, saying: “Unfortunately, I think about it a great deal. I had his face seared into my memory.

“I looked into his eyes every time that he said he was going to kill me,” she said. “I examined his face to see if it was the face of a killer.”

She testified that Weible forced her into his car, drove to a nearby elementary school and started assaulting her, but she escaped when he was momentarily distracted.

Dunn later picked Weible’s picture from among polices photos. She said she did not remember at first that he had appeared before her previously in court, and that she had sentenced him to unsupervised probation in 1982 in a similar attack.

In his opening statement, Weible’s lawyer, Barry Levin, argued that Dunn had identified the wrong man.