Rachel Pedroso had not seen her father since a bloody night at a crowded restaurant in 1992 until she swiveled Wednesday in a Philadelphia courtroom and eyed the graying defendant.
“This is my first time seeing him in 23 years,” she testified in her father’s murder trial. “(There’s been) no talk, nothing.”
Santiago Pedroso, 73, is accused of a Father’s Day rampage that left his ex-wife’s dinner companion dead. The self-described spiritualist, who ran a religious goods store in Philadelphia, fled to start a new life in the Philippines with a new wife and family, according to prosecutors.
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But she acknowledged that her police statement that night said otherwise. And she recalled how she and her father immediately left the restaurant when the women walked in, and how she tried to stop him from returning from his nearby home with a gun.
“Poppy, please no. Don’t do this,” she told him as he raced down the street, according to her police statement.
“I wasn’t able to stop him,” she recalled anew Wednesday. “He just kept going.”
