San Diego

Two eyewitnesses testified in Superior Court on Thursday that they saw police officers beating Sagon Penn with night sticks only moments before Penn fired gunshots that left one officer dead and another officer and a civilian ride-along wounded.

Angela McKibben-Lovett, who resided on Brooklyn Avenue at the time of the March 31, 1985, shootings, said she called the 911 emergency phone number because she “knew something was going to happen.”

“I’d like to report police brutality in front of my house,” McKibben-Lovett said in a recording of the 911 call played in court.

Only seconds after her call was received by a dispatcher at 6:13 p.m., three gunshots could be heard in the background.

Police Officer Donovan “Jacobs was definitely the aggressor, his face turned red and he looked like the type who wanted to start something,” she said, adding that, while Penn was backing up with his hands in the air, Jacobs pulled out a club and started swinging at Penn’s midsection.

“He (Penn) was blocking the blows, and I was glad,” she said.

She described a scene where Jacobs sat on Penn’s chest, pinning his arms down while he began punching Penn hard. She said Police Agent Thomas Riggs assisted Jacobs in the beating.

“I was scared because I knew something was gonna happen,” she said, and she called police because Penn was being beaten, not arrested.

Her husband, Anthony A. Lovett, testified that he saw Penn using martial-arts techniques but that they were mostly defensive moves.

He said a neighbor told him to call the police and to tell them to “make sure you send black officers,” Lovett said, referring to the white officers at the scene.

Testimony is expected to resume at 10 a.m. Monday with the prosecution calling more witnesses.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Carpenter contends that Penn shot the officers to avoid being arrested.

Carpenter said he was more than halfway through his side of the case, calling 37 witnesses to the stand on the 26th day of testimony.

Defense attorney Milton Silverman contends that Penn was a victim of a racial beating by two white officers and that he only acted in self-defense because he feared for his life.

Penn was acquitted of a murder charge last year. He is being retried on five charges, including manslaughter in Riggs’ death, and attempted murder in the shooting of Jacobs and Sara Pina-Ruiz, a ride-along passenger in Riggs’ patrol car.