Officer Says He Saw Killing Take Place : Courts: William Merchant testifies during trial of Ruben Dario Garcia in the 1989 slaying of Anna Alfaro.

In the first day of trial testimony in a case that took six years to bring before a jury, a Los Angeles police officer testified Thursday that his eyes met Anna Alfaro’s seconds before her ex-boyfriend fatally shot her in the head.

“When we arrived with the light it was pretty bright and all four of us looked at each other,” Officer William Merchant told a jury in Municipal Court.

Then, Merchant said, he saw Ruben Dario Garcia fire a shot into Alfaro’s head as she crouched submissively before him in an apartment building alcove on Christmas Eve in 1989.

“She put her hands up in a defensive motion. She looked at him and then fell back,” Merchant said.

Garcia, 25, a North Hollywood gang member known on the street as Chaka, is charged with first-degree murder, kidnaping and rape, as well as attempted murder for shooting at Merchant and his partner.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Shellie Samuels said Garcia and Alfaro, then 20, had an abusive relationship. According to court records, Samuels said, Alfaro called police four times in 1989 to claim that Garcia had struck her. Each time officers arrived, however, he was gone.

Soon after the killing, Garcia eluded police again, fleeing to New York and operating under aliases, authorities said. New York police arrested him in 1991 on the murder warrant. They held him in custody for three years to try him on drug charges, however, before returning him to California in 1994.

Alfaro’s boyfriend, Luis Diaz, also testified Thursday that he, Alfaro and her cousin had just delivered Christmas gifts at Alfaro’s parents’ home at 7033 Hazeltine Ave. when Garcia jumped out from the bushes and grabbed Alfaro first around the neck and then by the hair.

Diaz told the court that Garcia pointed the gun at Alfaro’s head before turning it on Diaz. He asked Diaz for the keys to his car and when Diaz refused, Garcia pulled the trigger twice, but the gun only clicked, Diaz testified. Garcia then struck Alfaro in the head and started dragging her off. Meanwhile, Diaz telephoned 911, he said.

“She was scared. . . . I saw her scared,” Diaz testified through an interpreter.

Diaz had been dating Alfaro a week before her death, he said. He testified that Alfaro had broken up with Garcia to rekindle a relationship with him.