Victim speaks at Carlton Cook trial

Barbara Mallet, an elderly and composed woman, faced an attentive jury as she explained in a plain-spoken manner the lost sensation in three fingers of her left hand, the stroke-like symptoms on the left side of her body, and the panic attacks and vertigo she gets in open spaces. Mallet, an employee at Kennedy Van and Storage Facility in San Francisco at the time, knew Cook as a customer. He came in one February morning and asked to extend his storage unit rental by a month. As she opened the cash drawer to take his payment, he beat her over the head with a wooden stick and grabbed at the rings on her left hand.

The assault, which took place 10 years ago, still affects her every day, Mallet said.

"I don't trust people like I used to. I don't go out at night where it's crowded. I want to be in an area where I can see what's going on around me. I'm very uncomfortable in private areas and some parts of the city," Mallet said.

Cook spent five years in prison for the assault. Less than a year after he was released, and while still on parole, he murdered Banuelos.

The only point at which Mallet became emotional was when she said she could not remember her daughter's name during the months she was recovering from the severe blow to her head.

Defense attorney Richard Keyes tried hard to prevent any testimony of Mallet's that might turn emotional from being heard in the courtroom, citing Cook's constitutional rights to a "fair and impartial jury" and a "reliable verdict." But Judge Judith Kozloski denied the defense motions.

And even before Mallet entered the doors of the courtroom, the defense attempted to block her testimony altogether because her son, Matthew Mallet, will be sworn in as a deputy district attorney for the District Attorney's office in a few weeks.

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