Defense Tries To Portray Sierra LaMar As Partying Teen
SAN JOSE (CBS SF) -- Drugs and partying, topics that attorneys in the murder trial of Antolin Garcia-Torres tiptoed around last week, has taken center stage as
prosecutor David Boyd and defense attorney Al Lopez questioned witnesses who testified that 15-year-old Sierra LaMar did go to parties and experiment with
drugs before she disappeared in 2012.
Garcia-Torres has been charged with the murder of the teenager, who has not been seen since March 16, 2012, as well as the attempted kidnappings of three women in 2009.
A series of Sierra's friends took the stand as witnesses Monday, all of them classmates from Centerville Junior High School or Washington High School in Fremont, or Ann Sobrato High School in Morgan Hill, where Sierra moved toward the beginning of her sophomore year.
Sierra was not happy about the move, a fact that has come up in some of her friends' testimonies, and that Lopez has attempted to point to as evidence of her running away.
The teen had also gone to parties and experimented with drugs including marijuana and ecstasy, her friend Anna Nohr confirmed.
However, witnesses including Sierra's friends Nohr and Audrey Weatherton confirmed that, at the time she disappeared, Sierra gave no indication of being distressed or wanting to run away.
Neither did she have a driver's license, a job, a passport, a bank account, a credit card or access to money other than from her parents, a point that Boyd made again through questioning witnesses.
The trial is set to continue with LaMarr's mother taking the stand at 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday.
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