Man convicted in kidnapping and sex assault of 10-year-old Northridge girl
The girl’s disappearance baffled investigators and panicked her Northridge community.
On a cool spring night in 2013, someone broke into a 10-year-old girl’s bedroom and snatched her away. The girl’s mother heard a noise and went to check on her daughter but she was too late -- the child was gone.
On Friday, a jury convicted Tobias Summers, 34. He was found guilty of 32 felony counts in connection with the case, including a host of child sex crimes. Prosecutors say he’s scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 22 and faces multiple life terms in prison.
When the girl vanished, police swarmed her neighborhood and went door to door. A frantic push by investigators to notify the public about the girl’s disappearance turned up leads but nothing concrete.
About 12 hours later, the search was over. The girl mysteriously appeared wandering in a Woodland Hills parking lot barefoot, battered and bruised. She was wearing different clothes from what she’d worn to bed.
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Eventually, detectives traced the kidnapping to Summers, a gang member with a lengthy rap sheet. Authorities concluded that Summers and another man, Daniel Martinez, went to the home to commit a burglary that night.
But everything changed when Summers came out of the home with the girl, whom he kidnapped at knifepoint. After driving a short distance, Martinez ditched the car, Summers and the girl. He was eventually caught and convicted for the burglary and sentenced to six years in prison for his role in the incident.
It took authorities a month to find Summers after the kidnapping. They traced him to a rehab facility 200 miles south of the border in Mexico. He had entered the facility under a fake name, but the Superman logo tattooed on his chest gave him away.
In the 12 hours that Summers had the girl, prosecutors say, he drove her to multiple locations and sexually abused her and snapped photos.
For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna on Twitter.
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