Night Stalker Victim Identifies Ramirez

Pointing across the courtroom at the shackled Richard Ramirez, a 21-year-old woman today identified the Night Stalker suspect as the man who shot her in the hand last year at her Rosemead residence.

It’s “the young man in the blue” jail uniform, said Maria Hernandez, the first surviving victim to testify at Ramirez’s preliminary hearing, which began last week. Hernandez’s roommate, Dayle Okazaki, 34, was shot dead in the March, 1985, attack at the condominium they shared.

Ramirez, 26, a drifter originally from El Paso, Tex., is charged with 14 murders and 54 other felonies in a series of attacks between June, 1984, and his arrest last August.

Hernandez, testifying calmly, said she was shot moments after returning at 11:30 p.m. from visiting her boyfriend. After parking her car, she said, she heard a noise in the garage and “saw a man . . . he was pointing a gun at me.”

The assailant said nothing, she testified, but moved toward her, and she put her “hands up for protection.”

She then heard a shot and “felt a cross between pain and heat on my right hand.”

She fell but saw the assailant enter the condominium. She then ran out to the front of the building and heard a noise inside--apparently her roommate being shot. She said she saw her attacker leave by the front door.

He confronted her again, she said, and she pleaded with him, “Please don’t shoot me again.” He heeded her plea and ran, she said.

Ramirez showed little emotion, keeping his eyes closed at times, during the testimony of Hernandez, a secretary.

The defense, in cross-examining Hernandez, attempted to show that her identification of Ramirez was a result of her later exposure to media pictures of the Night Stalker suspect. Hernandez acknowledged in testimony that a composite drawing of the suspect that she helped police prepare does not look like Ramirez.