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A 34-year-old man has been found guilty of kidnapping a 10-year-old girl from her bedroom in her Northridge home and sexually assaulting her several times. After dropping the girl off he fled the country.
The jury announced today that they found Tobias Summers guilty of a long list of charges, including sexual assault, kidnapping and burglary, the AP reports.
Deputy District Attorney Laura Knight told jurors on Monday during her closing arguments that Summers kidnapped his victim from her home and threatened her with a knife on March 27, 2013, according to City News Service. He then repeated sexually assaulted and raped the girl at different locations, including in his car, a storage yard, a drainage tunnel and a vacant house, Knight said. Some of the most disturbing allegations included Knight using a belt to gag the girl and choke her with it.
Authorities said Summers then dropped the girl off at a Kaiser hospital in Woodland Hills 12 hours later, and then he fled to Mexico. The girl walked about a mile to a Starbucks, when a bystander recognized from media reports that she was missing and contacted police. The girl was found barefoot, with cuts and bruises to her face.
Authorities arrested Summers a month later after finding him at a rehab center in Mexico where he had checked in under a fake name.
When the girl testified, she told the court that on the night of her kidnapping, she was taken from her home in the dark to a car that another man was driving, NBC Los Angeles reports. The driver later got out of the car after her attacker told him that he was dropping her off at a fire station. She told the court she was scared at the time.
A prosecutor said they found DNA on the girl's shorts that was "found consistent with the defendant." Summers' attorney Jeff Yanuck had told jurors, "No sperm, no saliva or any blood of Mr. Summers anywhere," and said it may have been someone else who sexually assaulted the girl. He added that Summers tried to save her. Summers testified this as well, and said, "I had to take care of her. I was so scared. She looked like a little version of my mom."
Knight said she believed Summers washed his DNA off of the girl before dropping her off.
"He kidnapped, he raped her, he sexually assaulted her ... He would have you believe that, somehow, he saved her life," Knight said.
Authorities believed that Summers had initially planned on burglarizing the girl's home, which he chose at random, but decided to kidnap her instead. Daniel Martinez, the man who waited in the alley the day of the girl's kidnapping and drove the car that whisked Summers and the girl away, was convicted last October for one count of first-degree burglary with a person present. However, he was acquitted on the kidnapping charge. Martinez's attorney said that Martinez objected to the burglary Summers wanted to commit, and that Summers told Martinez that he had to take the girl to a safe place. The girl's father said it was "appalling" that Martinez didn't report to authorities he had seen the girl even after seeing media reports about her missing.
