Sanchez Says Dart Gun Used in Assault

Murder suspect Vincent Sanchez unexpectedly took the stand in his own defense Tuesday, telling prosecutors that the gun he used to intimidate a woman he raped three years ago was his former roommate’s dart gun, not a handgun.

Although his testimony was chilling at times, Sanchez’s attorneys hoped it would undercut prosecutors’ argument that the 31-year-old Simi Valley handyman, an admitted serial rapist, escalated from assaults of women at knifepoint, to assaults at gunpoint, to kidnapping, raping and killing Moorpark College student Megan Barroso last summer using an AK-47 rifle.

Sanchez has admitted to sexually assaulting seven women, some at knifepoint. He also admitted shooting Barroso, whose bullet-riddled car was found under a freeway overpass on July 5, 2001. But he has denied kidnapping or trying to rape her, allegations that could make him eligible for the death penalty rather than life behind bars.

During a three-week preliminary hearing, expected to end today, Chief Deputy Public Defender Neil Quinn has argued there is no link between Barroso’s death and Sanchez’s assaults on other women. “This establishes that he hadn’t used a firearm ever in any of the rapes,” Quinn said after his client testified Tuesday.

Prosecutors wanted to use the assault of a woman on May 4, 1999, to suggest Sanchez was “out raping people with a firearm--and that’s not the reality,” Quinn said. “We want to get people back to reality here.”

Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Lela Henke-Dobroth and Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Dee Corona were permitted to cross-examine Sanchez only on the 1999 assault with the dart gun.

A slender, compact figure with a cropped mustache and goatee, Sanchez, dressed in jail blues, at first sat hunched and spoke softly. Under continued questioning by prosecutors, however, he sat upright and answered in a forceful, matter-of-fact manner.

He told prosecutors and Superior Court Judge Ken Riley that he emptied the darts from the gun before heading to his victim’s home, partly so that he wouldn’t injure her with the darts but also because he wanted to avoid leaving a dart behind that might put police on his trail.

“I didn’t want to have anything to link me to the crime,” Sanchez said.

Asked why he used a dart gun rather than a knife, Sanchez answered, “A gun is a lot more intimidating than a knife.”

“Your goal was to frighten her into submission, wasn’t it?” Henke-Dobroth asked.

“That’s exactly right,” Sanchez responded.

“An assault rifle would be very intimidating to anybody, wouldn’t it?” Henke-Dobroth pressed on, but Riley quickly shut down that line of questioning.

Sanchez’s lawyers called other witnesses to the stand Tuesday:

* Simi Valley Police Officer Robert Arabian, who interviewed a woman who alleged Sanchez chased her in his truck in October 2000. The woman, identified only as Makala, testified earlier this month that Sanchez tried to ram her car. During a taped interview in 2000, she said only that Sanchez had chased her car and followed her closely.

Arabian said he never asked her specifically whether she thought Sanchez wanted to ram her vehicle.

* Joaquim Fernandez Jr., Sanchez’s former neighbor, who testified that he saw Sanchez drink eight to 10 beers just hours before Barroso was shot. Fernandez said Sanchez did not appear drunk or despondent when he left Fernandez’s house about an hour before Barroso was believed to have been killed.

* Norm Fort, a forensic alcohol expert, who said Sanchez’s blood alcohol content might have been as high as 0.28 at the time Barroso was killed--about three times the legal driving limit--if he drank as much as witnesses have estimated he did, and if he did so on an empty stomach.

* Michael Perez, a high school friend of Sanchez’s, who testified that Sanchez once behaved angrily on the road when another driver got too close to Perez’s then-girlfriend’s car. Under cross-examination by prosecutors, Perez said Sanchez did not try to run that driver off the road, and that his anger was isolated behavior, not part of a pattern of angry driving.