Local News in Brief : 6th Witness Names Ramirez as Attacker
A sixth prosecution witness in the so-called Night Stalker trial on Thursday identified Richard Ramirez as the man who shot her and her husband in the head and then fled their Northridge house nearly four years ago.
Virginia Petersen, 30, testified in Los Angeles Superior Court on Thursday that she awoke early on Aug. 6, 1985, to find Ramirez pointing a gun at her.
“Who are you? What do you want? Get out of here,” Petersen recalled screaming. She said he shot her in the face from about three feet away.
She said he then shot her husband in the head. As the Petersens fell backward into bed, she said, Ramirez stood at the foot of their bed laughing.
But the woman said her husband, Christopher, managed to chase Ramirez out of the house and then he drove them and their unharmed 4-year-old daughter to a hospital.
Ramirez is charged with 13 murders and 30 other felonies in a series of night-time residential attacks throughout Los Angeles County, mostly in the spring and summer of 1985. If convicted, he could receive the death penalty.
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