From today's L.A. Times comes this sad story. It would be an irony if this girl's tears led to a conviction of her killer.
jwm
DNA in Girl's Tears Point to Killer, D.A. Says
By Christine Hanley, Times Staff Writer
Nearly three years in the making, the trial of the man accused of killing Samantha Runion began today with the prosecution saying it will present evidence including DNA from tears the 5-year-old left in his car before she died.
The lead prosecutor also told the jury of eight men and four women that cell phone and bank records will prove that Alejandro Avila, 30, is the one who snatched Runion from outside her condominium in the Southern California community of Stanton before he sexually assaulted and murdered her.
Assistant Dist. Atty. David Brent said the DNA evidence found in Avila's car is some of the strongest evidence in the case.
The defense said the DNA evidence collected is soft at best and strongly suggested that it was planted in the car four months after Avila's arrest.
During the lunch break, Brent said that argument was "outlandish."
"I'm a little surprised by that tactic," Brent said. "That's not the way law enforcement works in [Orange] County."
During testimony this afternoon, the prosecution is expected to call the 6-year-old girl who was playing with Runion when she was abducted.
The girl's playmate described the suspect in the July 2002 kidnapping to a police sketch artist. Several people who saw the drawing in the media called in to name Avila.
In more than a month of DNA hearings this year, experts revealed that a body hair and genetic material scraped from underneath one of the girl's fingernails appeared to link the child to Avila, who lived in Lake Elsinore.
Lawyers sifted through more than 1,500 prospective jurors to find those who could sit for the death penalty case, which could last through June. All but 159 were excused because of the length of the trial.
Questionnaires were used to help determine which of those remaining had not been prejudiced by news coverage the case received in the weeks after Runion's disappearance and who could be open-minded to recommending either the death penalty or life without parole if they convicted Avila.
Runion, a girl with a toothy smile and a mop of reddish-brown hair like her mother's, had just finished first grade when she was kidnapped. She loved Barbie dolls, and she plastered "Hercules" and Peter Pan posters above her bed.
Her friend told police that Runion was forced into a green car by a man who had pulled over on their street and told the girls that he was looking for a lost puppy. Her body was found the next day in the Santa Ana Mountains.
Police said at the time that they believed her kidnapper held her for several hours, sexually assaulting and eventually asphyxiating her. Officials suggested the girl fought back, scratching her attacker's face and arms.
Avila, then 27 years old and an assembly line worker at a pacemaker plant, has denied any involvement with the crime. He says he was at a shopping mall in Ontario the afternoon Runion disappeared. In 2000, Riverside jurors acquitted him of molesting two 9-year-old girls.
Erin Runion, Samantha's mother, has co-founded the Joyful Child Foundation, a nonprofit child safety advocacy group that in January 2004 launched Samantha's Pride. The program relies on parents and other caretakers to take turns supervising children and keeping an eye out for predators.
jwm
DNA in Girl's Tears Point to Killer, D.A. Says
By Christine Hanley, Times Staff Writer
Nearly three years in the making, the trial of the man accused of killing Samantha Runion began today with the prosecution saying it will present evidence including DNA from tears the 5-year-old left in his car before she died.
The lead prosecutor also told the jury of eight men and four women that cell phone and bank records will prove that Alejandro Avila, 30, is the one who snatched Runion from outside her condominium in the Southern California community of Stanton before he sexually assaulted and murdered her.
Assistant Dist. Atty. David Brent said the DNA evidence found in Avila's car is some of the strongest evidence in the case.
The defense said the DNA evidence collected is soft at best and strongly suggested that it was planted in the car four months after Avila's arrest.
During the lunch break, Brent said that argument was "outlandish."
"I'm a little surprised by that tactic," Brent said. "That's not the way law enforcement works in [Orange] County."
During testimony this afternoon, the prosecution is expected to call the 6-year-old girl who was playing with Runion when she was abducted.
The girl's playmate described the suspect in the July 2002 kidnapping to a police sketch artist. Several people who saw the drawing in the media called in to name Avila.
In more than a month of DNA hearings this year, experts revealed that a body hair and genetic material scraped from underneath one of the girl's fingernails appeared to link the child to Avila, who lived in Lake Elsinore.
Lawyers sifted through more than 1,500 prospective jurors to find those who could sit for the death penalty case, which could last through June. All but 159 were excused because of the length of the trial.
Questionnaires were used to help determine which of those remaining had not been prejudiced by news coverage the case received in the weeks after Runion's disappearance and who could be open-minded to recommending either the death penalty or life without parole if they convicted Avila.
Runion, a girl with a toothy smile and a mop of reddish-brown hair like her mother's, had just finished first grade when she was kidnapped. She loved Barbie dolls, and she plastered "Hercules" and Peter Pan posters above her bed.
Her friend told police that Runion was forced into a green car by a man who had pulled over on their street and told the girls that he was looking for a lost puppy. Her body was found the next day in the Santa Ana Mountains.
Police said at the time that they believed her kidnapper held her for several hours, sexually assaulting and eventually asphyxiating her. Officials suggested the girl fought back, scratching her attacker's face and arms.
Avila, then 27 years old and an assembly line worker at a pacemaker plant, has denied any involvement with the crime. He says he was at a shopping mall in Ontario the afternoon Runion disappeared. In 2000, Riverside jurors acquitted him of molesting two 9-year-old girls.
Erin Runion, Samantha's mother, has co-founded the Joyful Child Foundation, a nonprofit child safety advocacy group that in January 2004 launched Samantha's Pride. The program relies on parents and other caretakers to take turns supervising children and keeping an eye out for predators.
