Ride-Along Testifies to Seeing Penn Shoot Police

She saw the suspect eye the policeman’s holstered revolver. She saw the suspect grab the gun and squeeze its trigger. She watched the wounded officer fall and saw the dumbfounded look on the face of the second policeman who was about to die.

And then she watched, helplessly, as the suspect leveled the gun at her.

In graphic detail, civilian ride-along Sarah Pina-Ruiz testified Tuesday how her eyes met those of Sagon Penn, who then pumped two bullets into her through the window of the police car in which she sat in Southeast San Diego.

Her testimony--the first time that Pina-Ruiz has spoken publicly about the March 31 episode--came on the opening day of a preliminary hearing in Municipal Court for Penn, 23, the man accused of wounding patrolman Donovan J. Jacobs in the neck with Jacobs’ own revolver and then killing patrolman Thomas E. Riggs. The hearing, before Judge J. Richard Haden, is to determine whether Penn should stand trial in Superior Court on one count of murder and two counts of attempted murder.

Penn has pleaded innocent to the charges.

Tuesday’s testimony from other witnesses offered the first apparent explanation of why the two officers stopped Penn’s truck, but shed no light on the issue of who instigated the ensuing scuffle between Penn and Jacobs.

Preliminary testimony, including police radio communications tapes played in the courtroom, indicated that Jacobs, 28, and Riggs, 27, may have stopped Penn for questioning while searching for a member of Crips, a black gang active in Southeast San Diego. The gang member reportedly was seen brandishing a handgun minutes before in the same neighborhood.

Witnesses testified that before the shooting began, the two officers hit Penn, a martial arts expert, repeatedly with night sticks. Penn, witnesses said, concentrated on dodging most of the blows rather than delivering them.

Witness Angela E. McKibben, who lives within feet of where the shootings occurred, testified that Jacobs approached Penn’s truck, asked to see Penn’s driver’s license and then asked Penn to remove the license from his wallet. When Penn handed Jacobs the wallet in disgust and walked away, Jacobs grabbed his arm and Penn pulled away, McKibben testified.

“Then, one of the officers (Jacobs) took out his club and proceeded to kick his (Penn’s) butt,” McKibben said. So angered was McKibben by the treatment she saw Penn receive that she telephoned the Police Department to complain of brutality. McKibben was phoning in her complaint when the shootings occurred.

Her boyfriend, Anthony A. Lovett, testified that as he watched the confrontation, he heard Jacobs make a racial slur to Penn, saying “You think you’re bad, don’t you, boy?” before Penn, who is black, wrested Jacobs pistol from its holster as the two men scuffled on the ground.

Penn’s defense attorney, Robert E. Slatten, intimated that Jacobs might have been wounded when Riggs attempted to kick Jacobs’ .38-caliber revolver from Penn’s hand. The gun, Slatten suggested, may have then discharged, striking Jacobs. Autopsy results showed that in addition to receiving two chest wounds, Riggs was shot in the left foot by a bullet that traveled upward from the sole of his boot in a trajectory that might have taken it toward Jacobs’ throat.

However, none of the four witnesses who observed the shootings and who testified Tuesday said they saw Riggs kick Penn’s hand.

Penn, dressed in a gray, double-breasted suit with his hands folded passively in his lap, listened attentively but exhibited little emotion as each witness offered his or her version of what happened.

Security in the cramped, 48-seat courtroom was heavy as nearly a dozen members of the county marshal’s office guarded entrances to the room and searched spectators. The spectators included many members of Penn’s family as well as Riggs’ widow, Coleen, who dabbed at her eyes with a tissue as witnesses described the fatal March 31 episode.

The most graphic description of what led to the shooting came from Pina-Ruiz, a 33-year-old mother of two, who was riding with Riggs as an observer that night.

Pina-Ruiz said she and Riggs, trailing Jacobs-- who was alone in another patrol car-- followed a white truck driven by Penn into a driveway in the 6500 block of Brooklyn Avenue. She said she watched as Jacobs approached Penn’s door and saw Penn walk away but didn’t see or hear what prompted the scuffle moments later.

Riggs then got out of his patrol car to make sure the other occupants of Penn’s truck would present no trouble. He moved to assist Jacobs, who by then was wrestling with Penn, Pina-Ruiz said.

As blows were exchanged, Penn repeatedly asked the officers “why they were doing this, and the officers were telling him to cooperate and that he was resisting arrest,” Pina-Ruiz said.

Jacobs and Penn then fell to the ground, with Jacobs sitting atop Penn. Riggs stood only about a foot away, using his night stick to slap at Penn’s upraised arms.

“There was a moment of what I would call calmness and I thought it was being resolved,” Pina-Ruiz testified. “Then I noticed the driver (Penn) noticing the officer’s gun . . . I saw the driver’s eyes look toward the gun, and I knew he was going to reach for the gun.”

Jacobs, Pina-Ruiz said, tried unsuccessfully to prevent Penn from pulling the revolver from its holster. Even after Penn was in control of the gun and pointed it up toward Jacobs’ chest, Jacobs refused to release him.

“The driver was saying, ‘Let me go,’ and the officer was saying, ‘Don’t be a fool,’ ” Pina-Ruiz testified.

The revolver’s barrel was first pointed at Jacobs’ chest. Then, it moved up to his neck.

“Then I saw the hammer of the gun go back . . . and I knew he was going to shoot him,” Pina-Ruiz said.

The gun discharged, and Jacobs fell backward.

“I looked at Officer Riggs and he was what I would called stunned, dumbfounded,” Pina-Ruiz told the court. “He had had no idea that the person had the gun. (Riggs) had a baton in one hand and a radio in the other. There was no way he could (draw his own weapon).”

Pina-Ruiz said she heard the shots but didn’t see Riggs hit. Instead, she began frantically searching the interior of the patrol car for “something to protect myself with.” She found nothing.

She said she watched Penn approach the car. Their eyes met briefly and then he fired twice through the window, shattering the glass. The bullets hit Pina-Ruiz in the arm, abdomen and back.

A 14-year-old boy who testified Tuesday said he heard Penn say to Pina-Ruiz before firing, “Since you’re a witness, I’m gonna kill you, too.” Pina-Ruiz, however, testified that she never heard Penn say anything to her.

Pina-Ruiz said she lay still after being shot because she thought Jacobs’ gun still held one more bullet.

As Penn drove away in Jacob’s patrol car, Pina-Ruiz radioed for help. (Penn surrendered at police headquarters hours later.)

During Tuesday’s hearing, the prosecution played a tape recording of police radio communications which included Pina-Ruiz’s frantic pleas.

“We need help, we need help,” she cried breathlessly. When asked by a dispatcher her location, she replied, “Don’t know. I’m ride-along with Riggs . . . Two officers down. I’m ride-along and I’ve been shot . . . “

Pina-Ruiz’s husband, Roque, a Navy sailor who attended Tuesday’s hearing, said his wife has returned to work as a secretary since the shooting. He said she plans to become a San Diego police officer and is preparing to take a department physical exam.