School Employee Describes Attack

Looking frail and speaking with a slight tremor in her voice, a Balboa Middle School nutritionist told jurors Wednesday how she was kidnapped and brutally beaten by a soft drink deliveryman.

Evelyn Mancini, 52, testified that she had just opened her office at the school about 6 a.m. and was preparing for the day when a man, whom she said occasionally delivered Coca-Cola to the campus, approached her.

“I’m not here for a Coke delivery,” Mancini said the man told her. “This isn’t a friendly visit-- I want your truck. And you’re coming, too.”

Mancini said she was then dragged to her truck, driven to a secluded location and beaten and kicked in the face.

Mancini identified her attacker as 35-year-old Terry Lee Stephenson, who is charged with carjacking and one count of kidnapping. If convicted, Stephenson could receive a life sentence in prison.

But during opening statements Wednesday, Stephenson’s attorney told jurors that this was a case of mistaken identity. It was still dark outside when Mancini was approached on the morning of Jan. 7, 2000, said lawyer Steven Powell. And her attacker was wearing a dark sweatshirt with a hood pulled over his face. Mancini’s attacker also fumbled with the truck’s stick shift as he drove, abnormal behavior for a man used to wielding the 18 gears of a delivery truck, Powell said.

Stephenson’s only mistake, Powell added, was being in the area that morning, tending to a car that had broken down across from the school.

“Ergo, police reason,” Powell said, “the assailant must be the Coke man.”

But Mancini testified there was no mistaking the face of her attacker.

“Is there any doubt in your mind the defendant is the one who assaulted you on Jan. 7?” Deputy Dist. Atty. William Karr asked.

“There is no doubt in my mind,” Mancini responded.

Mancini said she got a clear look at her attacker’s face in the moments when he first approached her inside the school, when all the overhead lights illuminated the room. She said it was the face of the deliveryman who would often stand next to her desk eating from her candy dish whenever she had to sign delivery papers.

“He would just stand there eating the candy,” Mancini said. “Nobody ever did that.”

Mancini said she lied to her attacker, telling him she didn’t recognize him in the hope that he would take her truck’s keys and leave. Instead, she said Stephenson grabbed her around the neck and forced her into the parking lot.

As she was being shoved into her truck, a co-worker arrived and saw Mancini struggling inside. The co-worker scrambled to open the passenger door to pull Mancini out, but the truck pulled away too quickly, Mancini said.

The attacker then fumbled with the truck’s gear shift while gripping tightly to Mancini, she said. They ended up in the parking lot of the Ventura Missionary Church on High Point Drive, where Stephenson allegedly ordered his hostage to take off her clothes.

As Mancini spoke about the next several minutes of the attack, her chin quivered and her voice dropped to nearly a whisper.

Refusing to take off her clothes, she instead managed to squirm out of her assailant’s grip, opened the passenger door, fell out and began screaming for help.

“But he met me at the back of the truck,” Mancini said. “He threw me down on the ground and started kicking my face.”

Mancini said she doesn’t know what happened next. She woke up in a hospital, where she was treated for a broken nose and several chipped teeth. Her fractured jaw was wired shut. And she still suffers from headaches and is under the care of a psychiatrist.

“I have a fear of going anywhere,” Mancini said.

Police later recovered a car registered to Stephenson’s wife across the street from the school, prosecutors said. Stephenson also phoned in to work that day saying he would not be in, due to a family emergency.

Police arrested Stephenson a few days later in Bakersfield, where members of his family live. During a search of Stephenson’s Santa Paula home, police confiscated a black hooded sweatshirt, which was presented to jurors on Wednesday.

Mancini said she did not know Stephenson aside from his work as a deliveryman for the school.