Girls Testify Avila Abused Them

A girl who accused Alejandro Avila of molestation years before he was arrested in the kidnapping and killing of Samantha Runnion got another chance to tell her story in court Tuesday.

Fighting tears and shielding her eyes from the defendant, the 14-year-old told jurors in a Santa Ana courtroom that Avila fondled her and her cousin one night while he was baby-sitting. At one point, asked to identify her assailant, she pointed at Avila but refused to look his way.

A third girl, who knew the cousins and is now 16, was permitted to tell the jury how Avila once allegedly penetrated her with a glass vial, and she said she was too afraid to report it until after he was jailed in the kidnap-slaying.

“He told me if I told anyone, that someone would be killed,” the girl testified, her voice cracking. The girls’ testimony came on the second day of a trial in which Avila, from Lake Elsinore, is accused of abducting, sexually assaulting and murdering Samantha. The decision to permit their testimony is similar to the issue in the continuing debate in Santa Barbara County about whether to allow pop star Michael Jackson’s former accusers to testify.

Orange County Superior Court Judge William Froeberg, who is presiding over the Avila trial, ruled recently that prior accusers could testify for the limited purpose of establishing whether Avila was predisposed to commit sexual crimes.

Froeberg made the ruling despite the fact that Avila was acquitted on child molestation charges involving one of the girls who testified.

The judge’s ruling came after Assistant Dist. Atty. David Brent argued that Avila killed Samantha because he did not want to go through another molestation trial.

Before the girls testified, Froeberg reminded jurors that they may infer that Avila had a predisposition to commit the acts against Samantha. Evidence of such acts is not enough to prove the current charges but is one of many elements to consider, he said. The judge also referred specifically to the Jackson case, explaining that there were some “crossover issues” and instructing jurors not to let developments in that trial influence them in this one.

Samantha was a few days shy of her sixth birthday when she was abducted July 15, 2002, outside her condominium complex in Stanton. She was playing with a friend when a stranger asked for help finding his puppy, grabbed her and sped away with her in his car. Her nude body was found the next day off Ortega Highway.

Prosecutors say they have witnesses, debit card transactions and cellphone records that prove Avila was in the area, pumping gas and calling family members, before and after the kidnapping. They also have begun presenting DNA evidence -- possibly from dried tears -- that they say proves Samantha was in his car before she was killed.

Defense attorneys argued in their opening statement that investigators got the wrong man and, in their zeal to back up the charges, planted DNA evidence in his car.

In their first explanation of Avila’s whereabouts the night of the incident, Deputy Public Defender Phil Zalewski described a man heartbroken over the recent breakup with his girlfriend. Avila spent a lonely night driving around, as he would when he was upset, later checking into a Temecula hotel in hopes of a romantic reunion with his ex-girlfriend, Zalewski said. The reunion, though, never evolved.

On Tuesday, the woman whose call to Riverside County sheriff’s deputies sparked suspicion of Avila took the witness stand briefly to confirm that she was the one who tipped off investigators. She is related to one of the young girls whose allegations led to Avila’s previous prosecution in Riverside County as a molestation suspect. In that case, Avila was acquitted in 2001 of molesting the cousins.

The cousin who testified Tuesday broke into tears as soon as she took the stand and never looked Avila’s way, facing the jury and propping up her left hand to shield her eyes from him.

The 14-year-old girl, who was 7 at the time of the alleged incident, had to pause several times to regain her composure. She said her aunt had been dating Avila at the time of the alleged molestation and that she was visiting her cousin one night when Avila was baby-sitting.

The third girl told jurors that Avila molested her the night before a trip they were to take to Knott’s Berry Farm in late 1999. She said she had spent the night at his apartment, purportedly so they could get an early start at the amusement park. She said her father knew Avila and was later his roommate.

Zalewski attacked the credibility of both girls by focusing on inconsistencies in the statements they made to a variety of investigators.

Both witnesses acknowledged that there were some discrepancies in their recollections of the events.

Also taking the stand Tuesday was the father of the girl who alleged that Avila inserted the object into her. On cross-examination, he acknowledged that his anger toward Avila had not subsided.

He admitted that, after his daughter and the cousins had alleged what happened, he said he would shoot Avila.

“I don’t think I ever stopped feeling that way,” he told Zalewski.