D.A. Seeks Adult Trial of Youth, 17, in Rapes

Authorities said Friday they will seek to prosecute a 17-year-old boy as an adult in two sexual attacks this week, including the rape of an 11-year-old North Hills girl in front of her sister.

The attacks followed the suspect’s release earlier this month from the Los Angeles County Jail where he served six months for a sexual battery conviction in March, Deputy Dist. Atty. Dan Damon said. In that case, the teen-ager was prosecuted as an adult.

The suspect denied the new charges--the equivalent of a not guilty plea--during an arraignment Friday in Sylmar Juvenile Court. A hearing was set for Dec. 22 for prosecutors to seek a fitness hearing in which a judge will determine whether the teen-ager will be tried as an adult.

“We want to certify him back as an adult in the new cases,” Damon said Friday. “Absolutely--based on the nature of the offenses and the previous determination that he was an adult. The juvenile system is not amenable to him.”

Authorities declined to release the suspect’s name because he currently faces the charges as a juvenile. If eventually tried as a juvenile in the new cases and convicted, the maximum penalty he could receive is detention by juvenile authorities until he is 25, Damon said. If tried and convicted as an adult, he could be sentenced to up to life in state prison.

In the case prosecuted earlier this year, Damon said, the teen-ager pleaded guilty to felony sexual battery of a woman in South-Central Los Angeles, was sentenced to a year in jail and served six months before being released early on probation.

The new cases involve two separate attacks that took place several blocks and two hours apart.

On Monday, a male confronted two sisters, ages 11 and 17, about 10:15 p.m. as they pushed a shopping cart containing their 2-year-old brother and 5-year-old sister on Roscoe Boulevard in North Hills, according to the Los Angeles police.

The girls were ordered into a nearby alley where the attacker attempted to molest the older girl and then raped the 11-year-old at gunpoint, police said.

About two hours later, a 25-year-old woman was raped at gunpoint by an intruder who broke into her home several blocks from the location of the first attack, police said.

The youth has been charged with rape, attempted robbery, forced oral copulation, attempted forced oral copulation and four counts of kidnaping in the first incident, and two counts of rape, two counts of residential robbery and one count of false imprisonment in the second incident.