3 witnesses testify in Santiago trial

They were reluctant witnesses for the prosecution.

Three residents of Philadelphia's Spring Garden section the night Police Officer William Trench was shot as he sat in his car in May 1985 each said they would have preferred to be somewhere else today than testifying against Wilfredo Santiago.

And even 23 years later, they indicated that they were afraid to do so.

First up was Joaquin Sedeno, who testified that Santiago, then 21, vowed revenge against a Hispanic police officer who had chased him during the day for possibly carrying a weapon and who Santiago believed had hit his aunt during a scuffle. Santiago referred to his aunt as his mother.

"He hit my mom, and he's going to pay for it," Sedeno, who has a history of drug convictions, quoted Santiago as saying.

Prosecutors have shown that the Hispanic officer who was the target of Santiago's wrath had been driving Trench's patrol car, No. 912, during the previous shift.

Sedeno was followed to the stand by Elizabeth DelValle, who acknowledged that Santiago was in the courtroom but steadfastly refused to point him out.

"I don't want to," she said.

DelValle, who was 17 and pregnant the night Trench was slain, testified that she saw Santiago riding a bicycle in the direction of where the officer's car was parked shortly before the shooting.

Santiago, she said, had something wrapped in a paper and stopped to pick it up when he dropped it.

DelValle said she did not see what was inside but said her boyfriend, who was with her, told her what it was.

DelValle could not testify to what her boyfriend said, but through his questioning, prosecutor Carlos Vegas conveyed to the jury that it was a gun.

Last to testify was Jose Aponte, a drug dealer serving a prison term who complained that he had spent eight days in the courthouse holding cells as he waited to appear in court, sometimes encountering Santiago as they were moved about.

Aponte testified that he heard two shots in the early morning hours of May 28, 1985, looked out the window of ground-floor apartment on the 1600 block of Mount Vernon Street, and saw Santiago on a bicycle riding from the direction of 17th and Spring Garden Streets, where Trench had been fatally wounded.

Defense attorneys Bruce Franzel and Tom McGill Jr. pointed out numerous discrepancies in what the witnesses told police in 1985 or testified in Santiago's original court case and what they said today.

Aponte acknowledged that he lied when he testified in 1986 that he did not see Santiago that night.

DelValle said she did not tell police about seeing Santiago carrying something in a newspaper.

"I didn't want to get involved," she said.

Santiago, convicted of killing Trench in 1986, is being retried based on a 1991 appeals court decision finding judicial misconduct in the original trial.