Jurors Reach Verdict in Kidnapping, Child Rape Trial

Jurors today reached a verdict that’s scheduled to be read tomorrow in the trial of a man charged with kidnapping a 10-year-old girl from her bed in Northridge and sexually assaulting her in various locations.

The Los Angeles Superior Court jury got the case Tuesday against 34-year- old Tobias Dustin Summers and reached a verdict this afternoon.

He is charged with 16 counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child, 14 counts of oral copulation/sexual penetration with a child 10 or younger, two counts of sex/sodomy with a child 10 or younger and one count each of kidnapping, kidnapping to commit another crime, first-degree burglary, forcible lewd acts upon a child, using a minor for sex acts and possession of matter depicting a minor engaging in sexual conduct.

The charges include allegations that he committed several of the crimes during the commission of a burglary and while using a knife.

In closing arguments Monday, Deputy District Attorney Laura Knight told jurors that Summers chose the house at random, threatened the girl with a knife and then repeatedly sexually assaulted her in his car, a storage yard, a drainage tunnel and a vacant house on March 27, 2013.

Summers used a belt as a weapon and a restraint, using it to secure a gag in her mouth at one point, choking her with at another, the prosecutor alleged.

Defense attorney Jeff Yanuck countered that there was no credible DNA evidence that Summers was involved in any sexual assault and that the girl first told police that Summers was a man who had helped her, dropping her off at a hospital.

Summers’ attorney suggested that it was someone else who assaulted the girl and that his client had saved her.

There was “no sperm, no saliva or any blood of Mr. Summers anywhere,” Yanuck told jurors. “He chose to tell you what happened. Mr. Summers told you that he did not have any inappropriate touching of (the girl) and the DNA evidence supports that.”

While testifying in his own defense, Summers maintained that he was telling the truth about his interaction with the girl, who he said “looked like a little version of my mom.”

The prosecutor contended that Summers washed DNA evidence off the girl at a vacant house -- one of the locations he allegedly took her.

A small amount of DNA on the girl’s face was tested and found to be male. Summers could not be excluded as a contributor, while DNA on her shorts was “found consistent with the defendant,” the prosecutor said.

“He kidnapped, he raped her, he sexually assaulted her ... He would have you believe that, somehow, he saved her life,” Knight alleged in her closing argument.

The girl testified during the trial, telling jurors that she was led from her home in the dark and told to get into a car being driven by another man, who got out of the vehicle after her assailant said he was going to drop her off at a fire station.

“Were you scared?” the prosecutor asked.

“Yes,” the girl responded.

She said she “wanted to go home.”

The girl’s mother, who was called as the prosecution’s first witness, testified that she woke up, heard noises in her daughter’s room and saw their dog trying to get at the girl’s pet hamster, then realized that her daughter was not in bed.

She said that she started screaming her daughter’s name and called 911 after not being able to find the girl. Jurors heard a recording of the woman’s emotional 911 call reporting her daughter’s disappearance.

The woman said she saw her daughter with scratches and bruises later that afternoon at a hospital and was “relieved” that the child was alive. She said her daughter told her a few days later about details of the alleged sexual assaults.

Summers was arrested almost a month later at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center south of Tijuana, Mexico.

Los Angeles police Chief Charlie Beck said a $25,000 reward that was “highly publicized south of the border” led to the telephone tip about Summers’ whereabouts.

Daniel Martinez, 31, who was charged along with Summers, was convicted last October of burglary but acquitted of the girl’s kidnapping. He was sentenced last November to six years behind bars.

Jurors in Martinez’s trial were told that he drove away from the scene of the burglary before leaving Summers alone with the girl.

City News Service