SAN DIEGO -- A 19-year-old woman testified Tuesday that Richard Tuite followed her and three others as they rode buses from San Diego on their way back home to Escondido in February 1998, the month after Stephanie Crowe died.

Somer Hall said Tuite, who is on trial for stabbing 12-year-old Crowe to death on Jan. 20, 1998, got on a northbound bus at a San Diego mall at the same time she and three friends did.

"He waited for us to sit down," Hall testified. "He sat behind us."

Hall testified that she and her group got off the bus and had to wait about 20 minutes for another bus, and so did Tuite.

The witness said she and her friends exited that bus at the North County Fair mall, and so did the defendant.

After a 5-minute wait, they got on another bus to Escondido, and so did Tuite, she said.

Hall told prosecutor David Druliner that Tuite kept staring at her throughout the trip northward.

When they got to her home, Hall said she and a friend went into her apartment complex, and Tuite "continued to follow us."

Hall testified that she ran into a woman who walked with them toward her apartment, but Tuite kept "coming toward us," saying the name "Tracy."

"He kept repeating that over and over," the witness said.

Hall said she and her friend ran to her apartment.

"We looked back and we didn't see him," the witness testified.

Geraldine McKnight testified she came in contact with Hall and her friend as she was emerging from the apartment laundry room.

"The girls were screaming and running toward me," McKnight testified.

They were screaming "Gerry! Gerry! Gerry! Somebody's chasing us!" the witness said.

McKnight also testified that Tuite was saying "Tracy, Tracy, Tracy."

"I said to leave them alone, and that (Hall) wasn't Tracy," McKnight testified.

Earlier witnesses testified that Tuite was in the area of the Crowe residence in rural Escondido the night Stephanie was killed, knocking on doors and asking for a female friend named "Tracy."

Prosecutors said Tuite had an "obsession" to find "Tracy" and stalked and harassed other girls who looked like her.

Questa Hogan testified that she was a 14-year-old at home in Oceanside with her mother in September 1997 when Tuite walked by her kitchen door then appeared on the front step of the residence.

Tuite left but returned minutes later, the witness testified.

"I was very uncomfortable with this, because it was two times in a row," the woman testified.

As she and her mother were closing the door, "he ripped the screen door off," Hogan testified.

The woman said Tuite next reached up and smashed the upper portion of a window in the door.

The perpetrator was gone when Hogan returned to the kitchen after calling 911, she testified.

A few days later, Hogan said she saw Tuite at the Palomar College Transit Center as she got off a bus that took her there.

"I knew it was him immediately," she testified.

The woman said Tuite walked behind her as she used a pay phone to dial 911.

She said the defendant walked to within a foot or two and "just looked right at me, as if he knew who I was."

Escondido police initially thought Stephanie's murder was "an inside job" because Stephanie's father, Stephen, told them the laundry room door was locked, Druliner said.

The victim's 14-year-old brother, Michael, and his friends Joshua Treadway and Aaron Houser were arrested and charged with murder. But the charges were dismissed when Stephanie's blood was found on a filthy red sweatshirt Tuite was wearing the night the girl was killed.

The victim's blood also was found on a white T-shirt Tuite was wearing beneath the sweat shirt, authorities said.

Tuite, 34, initially was dismissed as being too clumsy to commit the killing. But the San Diego County Sheriff's Department took over the investigation and the state attorney general's office charged him with the girl's murder in May 2002.

Patton and co-counsel William Fletcher told the jury a tripod police used to take photographs in Stephanie's room may have gotten blood on it and then come in contact with Tuite's red sweatshirt when it was being photographed.

The attorneys said two Escondido police officers who were at the crime scene also came into contact with Tuite in a police holding cell and may have contaminated the red shirt and the white T-shirt that way.