O.C. Trial Begins in Runnion Slaying

The Samantha Runnion murder trial opened Monday with the victim’s young playmate recalling matter-of-factly how the 5-year-old Stanton girl was picked up by a stranger, thrown into a car and driven away.

“He passed by and looked at us,” the playmate, now 9, said of the kidnapper. “Then he went around the block and came again.”

Alejandro Avila is charged with kidnapping, sexually assaulting and murdering Samantha.

During the abduction, Samantha “was screaming ... shaking, kicking, trying to get loose,” Sarah Ahn testified in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana as she held a stuffed toy. Sarah is believed to be the last person besides the killer to see Samantha alive.

Her description of the kidnapper helped investigators produce a composite sketch of a mustachioed man who closely resembled Avila. She also remembered the getaway car as green, as was Avila’s car.

On Monday, Sarah spoke softly and couldn’t remember all the details she had told investigators immediately after the July 2002 abduction. She was the second of eight witnesses on the first day of a trial that is expected to last about four months and include more than 150 witnesses.

Samantha was kidnapped as she played with Sarah outside a condominium complex in Stanton. Her nude body was found the next day off Ortega Highway, which connects Orange County to the Riverside County community of Lake Elsinore, where Avila lived.

Her disappearance launched one of the most intensive investigations in the region’s history at a time of high-profile kidnappings: the murder of 7-year-old Danielle van Dam of San Diego and the abduction of teenager Elizabeth Smart in Utah.

Avila was arrested three days later, with the help of a tipster who told investigators that Avila was previously accused of molesting two girls in Riverside County and that one of them was living in the same complex as Samantha.

Shortly after Avila’s arrest, Zalewski noted, Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona publicly declared he was “100%” sure the right man was in jail. Even President Bush referred to Avila as Samantha’s killer.

For the most part, there were no surprises on the first day of the trial, as most of the evidence in the case has been disclosed in court documents, at hearings or reported by the media.

In his opening statements, Assistant Dist. Atty. David Brent reconstructed the crime and the investigation that led to Avila’s arrest. He promised jurors that the evidence he would present would include witness accounts, bank and cellphone records and DNA evidence.

The evidence, Brent said, includes scrapings containing Avila’s DNA taken from beneath Samantha’s fingernails and DNA that might have come from Samantha’s dried tears found in Avila’s car. The remark prompted the girl’s tearful mother, Erin Runnion, to cast her eyes down.

“None of this has been easy,” she said in a statement. “But it will be especially difficult to revisit all of the details as they are filtered through the parameters of a courtroom.”

Defense attorney Philip Zalewski told the jury to keep an open mind and remember that investigators were under enormous pressure to solve the case. Zalewski also attacked the DNA evidence as weak at best. He said the fingernail scrapings were improperly collected and suggested the DNA samples collected in Avila’s car were planted, citing a search four months earlier that turned up no evidence.

Speaking to reporters during the lunch break, Brent called the defense accusation “outlandish.”

“It’s very disturbing to me that they would even suggest that,” he said. “It’s not the way law enforcement works in this county.”

Samantha’s grandmother, who was acting as a baby-sitter for the girl when she was abducted, was the first witness, as prosecutors sought to reconstruct the events leading up to the crime.

Sarah was next, confirming most of her initial account to investigators. However, she said the abductor was wearing glasses, which was not part of her early description. The defense was quick to point out the discrepancy on cross-examination. Avila does wear glasses, and he had them on in court Monday.

Neither side asked her whether she could point out Samantha’s abductor in the courtroom.

Sarah was followed on the stand by a woman who testified that she was driving on Ortega Highway about sunset July 15 when she heard a “little girl screaming” for about 10 seconds. She later led investigators to that point, which is near a campground and not far from where Samantha’s body was found.

Avila, 30, was acquitted in 2001 by a Riverside County jury of molesting two girls. A parent of one of the children lived at the same complex as Samantha and called police when she saw the composite sketch of the suspect. The accusers from that case are among the witnesses scheduled to testify for the prosecution.