Opinion ID: 2594735
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Kidnapping and Robbery of Piedad Saiz, Maria Galvez, and Leo Pena

Text: At 2:20 p.m. on February 6, 1986, after closing her bar, La Copa de Oro, on Huntington Drive in Los Angeles, Piedad Saiz left with Antonio Duran, Maria Galvez, and Leo Pena. As they walked towards Saiz's car, a white 1983 Buick Regal, a man asked for a ride to North Broadway, saying he had run out of gas. Saiz turned him down. Saiz and her companions entered the car. As Saiz started to drive away, the man hung onto the passenger door. When Saiz stopped at a traffic signal a few blocks away, the man got into the backseat while brandishing a gun. He ordered Saiz to continue driving. After traveling three to four blocks, the man ordered everyone out of the car and told Saiz to leave the key in the ignition. He then lined everyone up on the sidewalk and ordered them at gunpoint to turn over their purses and wallets. Saiz, Galvez, and Pena complied; Duran did not. The man drove away in Saiz's car. Saiz and her companions then walked to Huntington Drive, where they flagged down a police officer. In a photographic lineup and at a live lineup, Saiz identified defendant as the kidnapper and robber. Pena identified defendant at a photographic lineup and at trial. Duran was unable to identify defendant at trial. Galvez did not testify. Patricia Saldivar, a friend of defendant's, testified that on the morning of February 7, 1986, she saw defendant drive a white car that she thought might have been a white Regal Cutlass. Defendant said the car was his mother's. That same morning, Ann DiPrima, defendant's girlfriend, saw defendant drive a white Monte Carlo or Regal, which defendant said he had taken from a bar. On February 10, the police found Saiz's white Buick Regal parked in front of DiPrima's home.