Jury deliberates in Sierra LaMar murder trial

Jury deliberations began Thursday morning in the trial of a Morgan Hill man accused of the murder of Sierra LaMar, the 15-year-old girl who disappeared five years ago.

Antolin Garcia-Torres, 26, could face the death penalty if convicted by the jury, comprised of six men and six women.

Prosecutor David Boyd delivered his rebuttal to defense attorney Al Lopez’s closing argument before the jury was dismissed this morning.

On Wednesday, Lopez reminded jurors that a witness reported seeing a brown car driving erratically in Sierra’s neighborhood around the time Garcia-Torres is suspected of abducting the girl in his red Volkswagen Jetta as she walked to her bus stop.

“It’s noise. It’s nothing,” Boyd said of the idea that another car had anything to do with Sierra’s disappearance on March 16, 2012.

Lopez played an animation that he claimed proved that Garcia-Torres would have passed through Sierra’s neighborhood three minutes before she would have left home for the bus stop, based on a selfie she snapped at 7:11 a.m. and the time he left his RV park 7 miles away.

“It does not prove what he wants it to prove,” Boyd said, claiming the numbers were off in Lopez’s timeline.

Sierra’s jeans, which were recovered in a field nearby, contained seeds that a Santa Clara University seed expert linked to an aquatic plant not found in her neighborhood, Boyd said Tuesday.

“Does anyone think Sierra drove herself up to Calero or Chesbro and started rolling around in the mud?” Boyd asked, referring to two reservoirs in the area.

Sierra’s jeans were also found to contain the defendant’s DNA. A pair of work gloves found in Garcia-Torres’ trunk indicated Sierra as a contributor at a rate of 340 trillion to 1, Boyd said Tuesday.

“You remember those numbers. They were devastating,” Boyd said.

The defense has argued that there is no evidence that Sierra is dead, a claim that Boyd attacked today.

Showing the defense Sierra’s final selfie, hair curled and tongue out, Boyd asked, “Is that the sign of a 15-year-old girl who’s ready to abandon everything?”

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