San Diego

A 13-year-old girl testified Monday that she saw wounded Police Agent Donovan Jacobs unsnap his holster while sitting on Sagon Penn before Jacobs was shot.

Krystal Smith, who testified in the Penn retrial as the seventh witness for the defense, is the only witness to claim that Jacobs made any movements toward his gun before Penn grabbed it from its holster and began shooting. Penn is charged with killing Police Agent Thomas Riggs and wounding Jacobs and ride-along Sarah Pina-Ruiz.

The girl told San Diego Superior Court jurors that Jacobs and Riggs both used profanity in speaking to Penn, 25, during the March 31, 1985, incident in Encanto.

“I saw the officers harassing him, you know, giving him problems,” said Smith.

She said Jacobs repeatedly told Penn to turn over, but Penn couldn’t because Jacobs was sitting on him.

“Why are you beating on me like this?” she quoted Penn as saying.

“He (Jacobs) was calling him racial names. He was calling him a nigger. They both were saying it,” Smith said.

Other witnesses have said that only Jacobs used racial slurs. Jacobs testified earlier that he did not use such language.

The girl’s father, Carlton Smith Jr., testified that Penn was submissive after Jacobs sat on him and that Penn remarked, “You got me.” The Smiths lived on Brooklyn Avenue in the house closest to where Penn struggled with the officers.

“What do you keep hitting me with that stick for?” Carlton Smith quoted Penn as saying.

Jacobs grabbed his handcuffs at one point but then put them away, Smith said.

“You mean to tell the jury, Mr. Smith,” began prosecutor Mike Carpenter, “that he had what amounted to brass knuckles in his hand and he put these things away in order to hurt Mr. Penn?”

“He put them away to hit him with his fist, I know that,” Smith said.

“They just kept beating him, so all I wanted to do was get some more officers out there to handle it correctly,” Smith said.

“I think I made the statement, ‘Would somebody go call the police before they kill him,’ ” Smith said.