Rusty Dornin: Prosecutor mulls penalties in girl's death

CNN's Rusty Dornin

(CNN) -- The man arrested in the Samantha Runnion case is scheduled to be arraigned Monday in a Santa Ana, California, courtroom.

Authorities arrested Alejandro Avila, 27, on Friday, four days after the abduction of the 5-year-old girl in Stanton. The girl was found dead Tuesday in Riverside County.

Avila's mother, Adelina Avila, said she was certain her son was innocent and had been at a local mall at the time of Samantha's kidnapping.

CNN Correspondent Rusty Dornin talked to CNN anchor Paula Zahn about the case Monday.

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DORNIN: Well, it's one week to the day since 5-year-old Samantha Runnion was snatched from her front yard while she was playing with her young friend. ... Alejandro Avila will be in court, make his initial appearance, and be arraigned on kidnapping, sexual assault and murder charges.

Now police are saying that it was several tips that initially led them to Avila and then they began comparing some of the physical evidence left at the scene. They went to his mother's apartment, where he lived [in Lake Elsinore], and began gathering belongings. They impounded several of the family's cars to look through those. ...

Sheriff Mike Carona says at this point he has no doubt that he has his man.

... Funeral services have not yet been announced for Samantha Runnion, although her mother did appear before well-wishers over the weekend and thanked them for all their sympathy and their help in terms of her daughter's death.

ZAHN: So, Rusty, one of the [prosecutors], or the DA of Orange County [Sunday] says he's considering the death penalty. Do you know exactly what would ultimately push him to do that?

DORNIN: Well, they're reviewing the case. As you know in California, Paula, that there are special circumstances that must be along with a murder charge. Of course, in this case it's kidnapping. He says that he will review the case. He wants to talk to the family. He wants to get a sense of the community and that sort of thing before he actually goes forward with that.

We'll have to see when that will be announced, whether that's [Monday], [Tuesday] or this week.

ZAHN: I thought the most interesting thing the sheriff had to tell us [Monday] morning was that even though they did not have the conclusive DNA link at the time of Friday's arrest, they arrested Avila anyway because they were afraid he was going to flee.

Have you heard anything else about that?

DORNIN: No. From what I understand, they felt they had enough circumstantial [evidence] at that point, but they were still awaiting some of these tests to come back later in the afternoon and that they just didn't want to lose track of him at that point.

So that was what made their decision to go ahead and arrest him and that might have also been, contributed to the very unusual press conference where he didn't answer any questions at all, you know, but only to announce Avila's arrest, but said that he would answer questions later and that we can only believe that that's, possibly that was pending the outcome of some of these preliminary tests.