Sailor Returns From Far East to Wife’s Bedside : Shooting Victim’s Spouse Has List of Questions

Roque Ruiz-Ramos wants to meet the man who allegedly tried to kill his wife.

“I just want to see him face to face,” he said. “That’s all I want to do--just look at him.”

And Ruiz-Ramos wants to ask him a question.

“Why?” he would ask Sagon Penn. “Why did you do that?”

Ruiz-Ramos, a crewman on the aircraft carrier Constellation, returned from the Philippines on Tuesday to be with his wife, Sara Pina-Ruiz, the woman who was riding along with police Officer Thomas E. Riggs on Sunday night when Riggs was shot to death.

Penn, a 23-year-old Southeast San Diego man, turned himself in to police shortly after allegedly killing Riggs and wounding Officer Donovan Jacobs and Pina-Ruiz with a gun he had taken from Jacobs’ holster.

For a few moments, Ruiz-Ramos transformed a press conference at Mercy Hospital to an imagined conversation between himself and the suspect. There were questions but no answers.

“Why? Why did you do that? . . . I mean, she’s in the car. It’s obvious she doesn’t have a uniform on. She doesn’t have a weapon. Why did you shoot her? Why?

“She wasn’t hurting him. And she was, like, off to the side. I just don’t understand why he shot her.

“I mean, he’s claiming self-defense,” Ruiz-Ramos continued. “But that’s not self-defense. I mean, he wasn’t being threatened at that one point or anything.”

The press conference had been called for Sara Pina-Ruiz to tell her story. But she wasn’t feeling well, her husband said. Mercy Hospital spokesman Norman Green said he understood that her attorney had advised her not to to discuss the incident yet.

Ruiz-Ramos said he wouldn’t discuss what his wife told him about the incident, saying, “I’ll let my wife do it directly.”

But he indicated that she contradicted the reports of some witnesses who said that Jacobs had provoked Penn to defend himself by harassing him verbally and then attacking him with his night stick.

Ruiz-Ramos said that “as far as I know” the police officers had been “calm and collected” and operated “by the book” before the confrontation turned violent.

“They weren’t out there to harass anybody,” he said.

Sara Pina-Ruiz, 33, was riding along with Riggs when they responded to Jacobs’ call for assistance. Pina-Ruiz was participating in the citizen ride-along program because she is interested in entering law enforcement--and she still is, her husband said.

“I love her, I support her, and if that’s what she wants to do, I’ll back her up,” Ruiz-Ramos said. “It doesn’t bother me.”

His wife would be a good police officer, he said. “She’s very level-headed. She makes decisions where they count. She sure made the right move at the right time,” he said, refering to how his wife used the police radio to call for help after she was shot.

They met about a year ago, Ruiz-Ramos said, and were married on Dec. 29. Her children, 14-year-old Teresa and 5-year-old Joshua, are staying with friends, he said.

The Constellation sailed out of San Diego on Feb. 21. When he received word that his wife had been shot, the message made it clear that her condition was not severe.

Their home in Encanto is only a few blocks from the site of the shooting. Ruiz-Ramos said it is a dangerous neighborhood. “We’re trying to move out,” he said.

Ruiz-Ramos, a short, powerfully built man who works with aircraft ordnance on the Constellation, was asked if he felt anger toward the suspect.

“No. I’m just going to let justice take care of it,” he said. “That’s what they’re there for. That’s why we pay taxes.”

But the sailor said he wished his wife had had access to a rifle or a shotgun inside the patrol car when the suspect was approaching with a gun. “I wish she had that option,” he said.

Ruiz-Ramos said he didn’t know if his wife was trained in the use of a rifle.

But after he finishes his deployment at sea, he said, “We’re going to join a gun club.”