A man was sentenced to life in prison without parole Thursday in the kidnapping and sexual assault of a 10-year-old Northridge girl who was abducted at knife point from her bedroom.
Tobias Dustin Summers, 34, was sentenced in connection with the March 27 abduction of the girl from her home in the 8000 block of Oakdale Avenue. The girl was sleeping when she was held at knife point and abducted, police said.
The charges against Summers included nearly three dozen sex-related counts, along with kidnapping and burglary. He was arrested April 24 at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center south of Tijuana, Mexico.
The victim and father were in court Thursday for Summers' sentencing. The girl said she had hoped Summers would be sentenced to prison.
The girl's father called Summers a "danger to everybody."
"If he ever gets out again, he will do it again," the father said. "He has shown no remorse, he has shown no regret."
Police said the girl was taken to various locations in two vehicles and was sexually assaulted before being dropped off near a Woodland Hills-area hospital that afternoon. Police said the girl was bound with a belt, had a sock stuffed in her mouth and was placed in the trunk of a car.
In her closing argument, 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.
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"My heart goes out to you and your family for the terrible suffering you have endured," said Judge Ronald Coen.
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.
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.
The victim 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, City News Service reported. 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.
Editor's Note: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of the name of Judge Ronald Coen.
