Penn Trial Witness Sobs in Court : Pina-Ruiz Again Relates Day of Slaying

In six hours of excruciating testimony, Sarah Pina-Ruiz on Friday offered her most detailed account yet of the five-minute confrontation between Sagon Penn and two San Diego police officers that left one officer dead and her and the other officer wounded.

Testifying for a full day in Penn’s retrial, Pina-Ruiz appeared to stick closely on key points to the version of the shootings she related in Penn’s first trial a year ago--a version textured with her acute, emotional recollections of gunshots, spattering blood and the look she exchanged with Penn before he fired at her through the window of a patrol car.

That account by the 34-year-old woman--a civilian ride-along who accompanied Police Agent Thomas Riggs on March 31, 1985, the afternoon of the deadly encounter--was sharply at odds with the scenario related by most of the witnesses in Penn’s first trial in San Diego County Superior Court.

But in a tactical switch by county prosecutors, the jurors have heard Pina-Ruiz’s version before the others this time--a ploy that lawyers said could establish her story as the account against which the others are measured in the retrial.

After two weeks of testimony in the retrial, jurors have heard from just three witnesses: Police Agent Donovan Jacobs, who was wounded by Penn; Penn’s grandfather, Yusuf Abdullah, who described Penn’s conduct in the minutes after the shootings, and Pina-Ruiz.

At a similar juncture in the first trial, the jury had listened for days to the testimony--much of it sympathetic to the defense--of the young blacks who were passengers in Penn’s pickup truck the afternoon of the confrontation and who crowded around as Penn struggled with Jacobs and Riggs.

On Friday, Deputy Dist. Atty. Wayne Mayer painstakingly led Pina-Ruiz, an office manager who had harbored an interest in police work before the shootings, through the minute details of Penn’s encounter with the officers. Pina-Ruiz said her recall was “not as vivid” as during the first trial, but added there were moments that afternoon “I just won’t forget.”

Borrowing a page from defense attorney Milton Silverman, Mayer play-acted many of the key events. Repeatedly, he stretched his six-foot-plus frame across the courtroom floor, positioning an assistant astride him as Jacobs had straddled Penn while they fought. At one point, he put on the shirt Penn wore that night. At another, he had Pina-Ruiz stand and demonstrate the martial arts stance Penn used to fend off blows from Jacobs’ baton.

Pina-Ruiz reiterated her claim that Jacobs and Penn lay roughly parallel to Riggs’ patrol car as she watched their struggle from the passenger’s seat. Other witnesses in the first trial described them as lying at an angle to the car--a position that would have obstructed her view of the shootings.

Pina-Ruiz also repeated her testimony--which went uncorroborated in the first trial--that after Penn had grabbed hold of Jacobs’ service revolver during their fight, he inched the gun up Jacobs chest to his neck, where he finally fired.

“I watched his finger go and then the hammer going back and then the shot and blood splattered,” she said.

She broke down once during her testimony--when Mayer played a tape-recording of her desperate radio call for help after Penn had fatally wounded Riggs, shot Jacobs in the neck and wounded her in the arm and back.

“We need help! We need help!” she screamed into Riggs’ police radio. As she listened to the tape, Pina-Ruiz turned away, covered her face with her hands and began to sob.

Silverman, who will begin cross-examining Pina-Ruiz on Monday, said her testimony was rife with “discrepancies and augmentation” from the details of her previous accounts, but he declined to discuss the variances at length.