Police Confirm Penn Was Arrested as Robbery Suspect

Sagon Penn, accused of killing a San Diego police officer and wounding another during a melee Sunday, was arrested as a suspect but never charged in the December, 1983, armed robbery of a San Diego man, it was confirmed Thursday.

Authorities would not say why Penn, 23, was not charged after his arrest on suspicion of taking $100 at gunpoint from a swimming pool cleaner who was robbed while banking at an automatic teller machine in the Clairemont area.

Disclosure of Penn’s previous arrest countered reports this week that he had never been involved with the police before Sunday’s incident, in which a civilian observer riding with officers also was wounded.

That civilian, Sara Pina-Ruiz, 32, was released from Mercy Hospital on Thursday morning and returned to her East San Diego apartment without publicly discuss

ing Sunday’s shooting. Pina-Ruiz sufferedgunshot wounds to the chest, abdomen and arm.

The officer wounded in Sunday’s incident, Donovan J. Jacobs, 28, who was shot in the neck, was listed in “stable and improving” condition Thursday. Police Department investigators have been eager to question Jacobs on what prompted the shooting, in which Police Officer Thomas E. Riggs, 27, was killed.

Jacobs, Riggs and Pina-Ruiz all were shot with Jacobs’ .38-caliber revolver, which Penn allegedly wrested from Jacobs’ holster during a scuffle in Encanto.

Penn has pleaded innocent to one count of murder and two counts of attempted murder. He is being held in the San Diego County Jail downtown in lieu of $250,000 bail.

On Thursday, Police Department sources disclosed that Penn was one of three men arrested after the Dec. 17, 1983, armed robbery of a man identified as Edward Prosinski, a pool cleaner employed by Pacific Chemical.

Details of the 1983 incident were sketchy. It was known, however, that Prosinski was standing at a Wells Fargo Bank machine at 6545 Balboa Ave. when he was accosted by at least one black man brandishing a handgun.

Prosinski was ordered to remove money from the automated teller machine and was then ordered to lie face down on the pavement. He told police that he was robbed of $100 in cash. His wallet also was stolen.

Penn was later arrested in the area with two other men. All three were booked into County Jail on suspicion of armed robbery. The case was subsequently submitted to the San Diego County district attorney’s office but was never prosecuted.

Assistant Dist. Atty. Mike Carpenter, who is prosecuting Penn on the Sunday shootings, declined to comment when asked to confirm Penn’s 1983 arrest. Penn’s attorney, Robert E. Slatten, could not be reached for comment.

Penn’s arrest in 1983 came eight months after he unsuccessfully applied to become a San Diego police officer. Penn passed a physical examination but failed the reading comprehension aspect of the department’s application exam, according to a police spokesman.