2 Women Testify About Alleged Sexual Attacks by El Rio Driver

While driving home from a friend’s house last year, a 19-year-old Fillmore woman was pursued by a lone driver on California 118 who ran her off the road after a high-speed chase.

But the terror did not stop there: he pulled her from the wreckage by her hair, drove her to a Somis orange grove and raped her, she told a judge Friday.

“I was in fear of my life,” she testified at the trial of Silverio Ambriz, an El Rio man accused of attacking her.

As the woman spoke, Ambriz sat motionless at the defense table. He told authorities that he was home asleep at the time of the assault.

But at the conclusion of her testimony Friday, the witness looked across the courtroom and positively identified Ambriz as her attacker.

“He is sitting directly in front of me,” she testified in a soft, steady voice. “There is not any doubt in my mind. He is the one that did it.”

Ambriz is facing 14 criminal charges, including rape, kidnapping, sexual battery, robbery, and assault with a deadly weapon for allegedly attacking four women on the night of Nov. 29, 1996.

Prosecutors say he began an escalating crime spree by bumping the back of a Simi Valley woman’s car as she was driving home from a Thanksgiving Day party.

Within hours, they say the defendant grew increasingly more violent, eventually pushing his last victim off the road with the intent to rape her.

On Friday, two victims took the witness stand and told Superior Court Judge Allan L. Steele, who is hearing the case without a jury, about the events that unfolded a year ago.

The first woman described how a man in a large white truck rammed the back of her car while she was driving on California 118.

When she stepped out of the car to check the damage, she testified, the driver of the truck grabbed her by the hair and attempted to sexually assault her. The woman said she was able to break free of his grasp and drive away.

She identified Ambriz in court Friday as the man who assaulted her.

Later in the day, another alleged victim took the stand for about two hours and recalled in detail how she was also forced off the road by a man driving a large white truck.

She said that when she attempted to brake at a tight curve on the winding road, her car flipped over and landed upside down along the shoulder. As she lay inside the wrecked car, she said, “I heard tires screeching on the road.”

Someone got out of a vehicle and pushed her car onto its side, she testified. A man then yelled: “Open the door.” When she refused, the man grabbed a stick and broke the passenger side window.

“He reached inside and grabbed me by the hair,” she testified.

The suspect pulled her out of the car and dragged her across the highway to a white truck, where he forced her to get inside, she said. Once in the cab, the attacker drove about five miles into an orchard, where he raped her, she testified.

The man then tied her feet and hands together with shoestrings and left her bound and naked in the dark orange groves.

“I couldn’t do anything but lay there,” she said.

Before the suspect drove away, the witness testified, he claimed a small trophy by yanking a silver earring from her ear. She said he told her: “I want to remember you by this.”

Throughout her ordeal, the woman said she was able to get several good looks at the man who attacked her. She identified that man in a police photo lineup and in court Friday as Ambriz.

Testimony in the case is expected to continue next week.