Child, 10, Testifies That Suspect Molested Her : Crime: Salesman is ordered to stand trial on charges stemming from attacks on five girls and young women.
VAN NUYS — On Memorial Day weekend, a 10-year-old girl walked alone to a West Valley supermarket to buy lemon-lime soda pop and a Butterfinger candy bar.
But on the way home, she testified Tuesday, a man in a pickup truck snatched her off the street, drove her to the mountains and did terrible things to her that she didn’t completely understand.
At first, taking the witness stand in Van Nuys Municipal Court seemed to be too much for the child. On the witness stand, she turned her head away from her accused molester and whimpered. She asked for a break, then for her mommy.
“I don’t want to see him,†she said in a small, quavering voice and dove, crying, into her mother’s arms. Finally, the tears subsided, and with her mother seated next to her, the child pointed her finger and identified Howard August Davis, a 29-year-old salesman who lived in Woodland Hills, as the man who accosted her and molested her three separate times on the evening of May 30.
After hearing the child’s testimony and similar stories from four other alleged victims, Municipal Court Judge Gregg Marcus ordered Davis, the son of a retired Beverly Hills police officer, to stand trial on 33 felony counts--including kidnaping, rape, sodomy, forcible oral copulation and child molestation.
The charges stemmed from a series of abductions and attacks on five girls and young women, ages 10 to 18, between May 1 and May 30, Deputy Dist. Atty Martin L. Herscovitz said. All the attacks occurred in the western San Fernando Valley.
Because Davis drove a pickup truck and allegedly abducted four of his five victims from streets near stores and shopping malls, police and prosecutors dubbed him the Valley Pickup Truck Rapist.
As the alleged victims recounted their ordeals during a two-day preliminary hearing, a pattern emerged: All were accosted near malls and shopping centers by a man asking for directions or change, then taken to isolated alleyways or mountain locations, where they repeatedly were raped or sexually assaulted. The nature of the sex acts and their sequence seldom varied.
The young women said they were abducted at knifepoint--one described how he used a knife to cut off her bra, while the child said she was threatened with a stun gun.
“He took out something,†the child said. “It was an electric shocker and he said he would hurt me if I wasn’t good. I heard a buzzing noise.â€
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Another alleged victim said Davis kept her glasses, keys and an organizer she carried. “I started to pick them up and he said, ‘No, I better keep those. That way I can find you if I need to,’ †she testified.
Davis, who is being held on $2-million bail, is scheduled to be arraigned in Superior Court on Sept. 13.
Defense attorney Peter Knecht said Davis asserts he is innocent.
Knecht questioned the prosecution witnesses closely, seeking to draw out inconsistencies in their stories, as well as clues or admissions that their identifications of his client might have been influenced by the widespread publicity the case received.
Davis, who had no prior criminal record, was arrested June 3 near the intersection of Ventura Boulevard and Sale Avenue--two days after investigators linked a string of sexual attacks to a single, serial rapist.
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