"I was having a problem with my tenants, and I wanted Jose Santiago roughed up," Comp, 25, testified. "We wanted them to vacate."
Assistant District Attorney Jacqueline Carroll said Comp would be put on eight years' probation in exchange for her testimony.
Comp testified during a 2 1/2-hour preliminary hearing before District Justice Eugene DiFillippo Jr. in Kennett Square that ended with the men accused of carrying out the 1985 attack - Robbins, 34, and Mark R. Conaway, 29, of Drexel Hill - held in Chester County Prison for not making $50,000 bail.
One of the landlords, Brian Hurley, 29, is free on $1 bail. The other landlords, Comp and her husband, Bradley, 26, were arrested after the hearing yesterday and freed on $1 bail.
All the defendants face charges of criminal attempted homicide, aggravated assault and criminal conspiracy. The landlords, whose preliminary hearing is scheduled for March 10 before DiFillippo, also face charges of ethnic intimidation and criminal solicitation in connection with the May 13, 1985, incident.
Santiago testified that Bradley Comp had used ethnic slurs against him during their continuing landlord-tenant dispute.
The attack occurred hours before the Santiago family, who lived in the 400 block of South Broad Street in the apartment below the landlords - were to go to court seeking an injunction to bar the landlords from harassing them, Jose Santiago testified.
Shortly after midnight, Santiago testified, he was lying in his bedroom when a man knocked at the front door and told him to go outside. After telling the man to wait on the porch, Santiago said, he asked his wife, Lorraine, to call the police, but the phone was dead.
A second man came to the window and said: " 'We came to settle your problem with Brad,' " Santiago testified, " 'You better come outside. If we go inside, it's going to be worse for you.' "
Santiago said one man had smashed the glass storm door with a baseball bat and then had shot him in the temple, grazing him, while he was trying to hold the front door closed.
Pushing back his hair to display a jagged, half-inch wide bullet wound, Santiago said he and his mother-in-law, Myrtle Najmola, had tried unsuccessfully to defend themselves with a mop handle.
The intruder pushed the door open, beat Najmola on the head with the bat, shoved and struck Lorraine Santiago and then chased Jose Santiago into the kitchen, using the bat to knock a 7-inch knife from his hand, Santiago said.
Santiago testified that a second man, who wore camouflage paint on his face and a ski cap, had then entered the kitchen and shot him in the chest.
"They walked over, looked and said, 'We killed the son-of-a-bitch,' " Santiago testified. Najmola, who watched the shooting from the living room, testified that the men then "threw the stick at his head where the bullet
went in" and left the house.
