2 Men Face Trial on Charges of Kidnap, Rape : Crime: The judge rules there is sufficient evidence to try the Van Nuys gang members in an attack on a 12-year-old Sherman Oaks junior high girl.

Two Van Nuys gang members were ordered Tuesday to stand trial on charges of kidnaping a 12-year-old girl outside a Sherman Oaks junior high school and drugging and raping her.

The girl refused to back down from her accusations over two days of cross-examination in Van Nuys Municipal Court by attorneys for Jose Puebla, 19, and Luis Guzman, 20.

While expressing some doubt about the weight of the evidence, Van Nuys Municipal Judge Michael S. Luros ruled there was sufficient cause to bind Puebla and Guzman over for trial.

The two men, who have been in custody since the alleged Nov. 22 incident, are to be arraigned in Superior Court on Jan 7.

Defense attorneys contend that the girl, who is now 13, fabricated the kidnap-rape story to avoid being disciplined by her mother for skipping school. “She has told many different stories and she has a motive to make up such stories,” Deputy Public Defender Mitch Bruckner said.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Shellie Samuels attributed inconsistencies in the girl’s story “to her age and the fact that she was drugged before being raped.”

Alternately weeping and smiling nervously on the stand, the girl said she got into a truck outside Millikan Junior High School about noon on Nov. 22 because she feared for the safety of another girl who was inside the vehicle with several male gang members.

The girl said Puebla forced her into an apartment in North Hollywood where, she said, another man gave her a soda laced with a white powder, causing her to pass out. She said that when she awoke, she was lying naked on a bed with Puebla, also naked, lying next to her.

She said that Guzman later entered the locked room, hit her head against the door twice and raped her.

After a third man forced her to drink more of the drugged soda, she passed out again, the girl said. The men later returned her to school, she said.

Defense attorneys focused on the girl’s initial statement to police that she had voluntarily gotten into the truck outside school and her admission in court that after the alleged rapes, she went for a car ride with another gang member, then returned to the apartment.

Prosecutor Samuels expressed confidence that not-yet-completed medical tests will corroborate the girl’s story about being drugged and raped.

Puebla, who faces up to 12 years in prison, is charged with kidnap, rape and child molestation. Guzman, who is facing eight years imprisonment, is charged with rape and child molestation.

For lack of evidence, Judge Luros dismissed a charge against Mauricio Aguilar, 22, of Van Nuys of threatening a witness in the case.