Tearful Mother Tells of ‘Wrong Way’ Slaying

As her family and friends wept in the courtroom, the mother of Stephanie Kuhen recalled Wednesday how the 3-year-old girl was mortally wounded when a group of gang members allegedly unleashed a fusillade of bullets at a car traveling down a dead-end street north of downtown.

Testifying in the Los Angeles Superior Court trial of four gang members accused in the slaying, Robynn Kuhen tearfully told the jury how her family’s return from a party with friends ended in the infamous 1995 “wrong way” slaying.

Kuhen described how the search for a shortcut landed her, Stephanie and other family members on a dark street in Cypress Park at 1:45 a.m. on Sept. 17, 1995. And she told how it was only after a frantic drive home that she realized her daughter was dead.

Authorities contend that Kuhen and her family were essentially ambushed on that dead-end street by a gang of youths, including the four defendants: Anthony Gabriel Rodriguez, 28; Manuel Rosales Jr., 22; and Hugo David Gomez and Augustin Lizama, both 17. All four have pleaded not guilty to the charges of killing the toddler and the attempted murder of the car’s other occupants--Robynn Kuhen, her brother, David Dalton; Robynn’s two other children, Christopher and Joseph; and her boyfriend, Tim Stone, who was driving the family’s car when the shooting occurred.

Prosecutors have attempted to link the defendants to the shooting through ballistics tests and the testimony of one former gang member, who testified against the four in exchange for immunity. But to date only one victim--Stone--has positively identified a lone defendant as taking part in the incident.

Before the prosecution rested its case Wednesday, attorneys for the defendants gingerly sought to raise doubts about the events leading up to the shooting.

During the cross-examination of Dalton, for example, the lawyers not only questioned his recollection of events but why, after attending a party at which he acknowledged drinking as many as five beers and smoking marijuana, he got the group to stop off at a friend’s home at 1:30 a.m. to collect $15 she owed him.

Whatever doubts the defense was able to raise were overshadowed by the brief but wrenching testimony of Robynn Kuhen.

While she was composed for most of the morning session, she dissolved into tears when Deputy Dist. Atty. Eleanor Hunter gently questioned her about what happened after the family, packed into a car, came under fire as it attempted to speed out of the dead-end street where gang members were throwing a party.

Recalling how the gang members tried to block the car’s exit with a trash can, Kuhen told the courtroom of Superior Court Judge Edward Ferns that her boyfriend floored the vehicle in an effort to escape, and that gunfire then erupted.

“What were the children doing?” Hunter asked Kuhen.

“Screaming,” Kuhen answered, recalling how she was sprayed by glass as bullets shattered the car’s rear window.

As they made their escape and raced home, Kuhen said, she learned that her boyfriend had been shot once in the back. She said her brother reached over and attempted to stop the flow of blood with his hand.

Once at home, Kuhen said, she first unbuckled her son, Joey, from the car’s back seat and placed him on the ground before returning to remove the other two children from the car.

“Chris was just saying he wanted out, he wanted out. And when I grabbed Stephanie, she wasn’t moving or anything. And I seen the hole in . . . her head,” Kuhen said..

“I grabbed her, and I put my thumb over the hole and I just started screaming for somebody to help me. And I just kept screaming and screaming. And a neighbor from the corner . . . came up, and he tried to give her mouth-to-mouth and stuff, but she was already gone,” Kuhen said in tears.

Later, when a defense attorney asked her to reconcile one portion of her testimony with statements she earlier made to police, Kuhen bluntly replied that she was certain of her testimony’s accuracy given the searing nature of the event. “I relive it everyday,” she said.