San Francisco News Blog

​Keandre Davis, 20, will face three charges related to a shooting outside the Suede nightclub on Bay Street on Sunday morning that left one dead and four injured. Davis will be charged with murder, assault with a semiautomatic firearm, and negligent discharge of a firearm, said DA office spokesman Brian Buckelew.

San Francisco resident Phuc Le, 42, will face a murder charge following his arrest Sunday in the Tenderloin, Buckelew said. Le called 911 and was allegedly found covered in blood by police. He led officers to a nearby apartment where Tuan Nguyen, 36, was found stabbed to death. (Note: Le's name was misspelled by police -- and in initial news stories -- as "Phuck Van Lee.")
 

Jamal Trulove, who enjoyed a brief bout of celebrity as an unsuccessful contestant on the VH1 reality TV show I Love New York 2 in 2007, was found guilty of first-degree murder in San Francisco Superior Court this afternoon.

Jamal Trulove, a.k.a. 'Milliown'

​Trulove, known on the show as "Milliown," had faced the murder charge and one charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm following his arrest for the killing of 28-year-old San Francisco man Seu Kuka in the Visitacion Valley neighborhood in 2007. Following four days of deliberations, the jury found him guilty on both counts -- as well as a firearm enhancement to the murder charge that means Trulove faces a minimum sentence of 50 years in prison, according to Brian Buckelew, spokesman for District Attorney Kamala Harris.

Buckelew characterized the verdict as an against-the-odds victory for police and prosecutors, since the case rested on no evidence beyond the testimony of a single witness. In Visitacion Valley, as in other city neighborhoods plagued by gang violence, witnesses are notoriously reluctant to testify in murder cases. "Twenty-five people saw it. One person was brave enough to come forward and say what she saw," Buckelew said. "The takeaway is that one person can make a difference."

​Patrol Special Officer Robert Burns -- who was on duty outside the club under contract with Suede -- wounded the suspect, whose name has not been released, during the incident early Sunday morning, according to a statement from Jane Warner, president of the Patrol Special Police Officers Association. The suspect was being treated at General Hospital.

According to the statement, "Officer Burns evaluated the situation. He noted that the suspect continued to threaten to fire or fired his gun, prompting Burns to draw his side arm and return fire, injuring and stopping the suspect." The statement also asserted that "Burns' quick action avoided additional harm to the public."

Bad form, lads. Bad form.

​A pair of Bernal Heights men's conversation about a member of the opposite sex turned violent Sunday, with the confrontation concluding like all too many poorly refereed quidditch matches.

Police were dispatched to the 300 block of Crescent after a gent reported that he "got into an argument with a co-worker about a woman they knew." The disagreement escalated out of the realm of the verbal when the victim's colleague wielded a broomstick, beat the victim twice, and fled the scene (presumably not on the broomstick).

Per police and wizarding policies, the suspect in this case is He Who Shall Not Be Named.

Police officers' worries about violence at the Suede nightclub, sadly, were not off the mark

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August's partner Friday night was Josh Nazzal, a rookie officer who had recently started his year-long probation period at Central. The first time they drove past Suede, the line outside the door looked pretty docile, and the officers had other calls coming in. A body had been discovered in a Chinatown apartment -- an old man, it turned out, who had died alone in his room. A neighbor had heard screaming in an apartment and was worried about child abuse. August and Nazzal dealt with the calls and kept circling around the neighborhood. They took a swing around Coit Tower, where couples admiring the skyline eyed them nervously. Later, they paused to make sure the drunk guy who had collapsed in a doorway was going to be okay. He started to come around as they waited: The man's friend told the officers that the drunk fellow had just quaffed 5 Adios Motherfuckers in an hour. "Ehn. It's a rainy Friday," the friend said.

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The grim tally of yesterday's  early morning shooting outside Suede nightclub on Bay Street remains unchanged this morning, according to the Medical Examiner's office: One man is dead and multiple victims of early morning gunfire into a crowd are still living.

Lawon Hall, 19, of Richmond was killed on the scene and at least two other crowd members remain in critical condition following the outburst. A 20-year old Richmond man suspected of the shooting was himself shot on the scene by a San Francisco Patrol Special officer -- still referred to as an "armed security guard" in some media reports. Police hope to question the yet-to-be-named suspect when he recovers from his wounds.

What triggered the "altercation" within the club that led to the shooting outside of it is still largely unknown. Police are searching for witnesses to the incident and of the resultant shooting. They are encouraged to call the Police Department's confidential tip line at (415) 575-4444 or text a tip to TIP411.

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The San Francisco Medical Examiner moments ago identified Tuan Nguyen, 36, as the man stabbed to death yesterday morning in an apartment at Ellis and Hyde.

Phuck Van Lee, a blood-soaked man who flagged down police and directed them to Nguyen's apartment, was questioned and later arrested. Van Lee was booked for homicide yesterday, according to police spokesman Sergeant Wilfred Williams.

Nguyen is the city's seventh homicide of the year, and first since Xiao "Ben" Xiong Luo was shot to death in a bizarre home-invasion in the Outer Sunset on Jan. 27.

Update, 9:45 a.m.: Sadly, the city's next homicide victim came a scant 24 hours after Nguyen. An "altercation" at 383 Bay Street at 1:45 Sunday morning led to shots being fired into a crowd, and 19-year-old Richmond resident Lawon Hall was killed. At least one other person on the scene was gravely injured. According to Williams, a Patrol Special police officer was on the scene and witnessed the incident. He is believed to have returned fire, striking the suspected gunman, who has been arrested.

Williams said the SFPD is searching for more witnesses and urges them to call the anonymous tip line at (415) 575 4444 or use text-a-tip: TIP411 and enter SFPD.


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That's what happened to Dabney, 44, on March 25, 2009, a day he says he was merely out for a stroll with his puppy. The puppy appeared thirsty, Dabney said, so he picked up a cookie tin he found near a garbage can. He planned to use it as a water bowl.

He walked to a nearby market on Ellis and Jones streets to buy a bottle of water, he said, but ran into a friend and some lady. The three chatted, and just as Dabney went to empty out the tin into the garbage, the police showed up.

They wanted to know, what's in the tin? "I don't know. Cookies?" Dabney said, handing it over. There was a broken butter cookie in the tin. Also some wrappers. And gosh darnit! A small bag of crack-cocaine.

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A 17-year-old boy shot in the stomach last night in what appears to be an unprovoked shooting near Fort Mason is out of surgery with his condition upgraded to "non-life-threatening." He may speak to investigators from the Natonal Park Police and FBI as soon as today.

The boy and a 22-year-old woman whose head was grazed by a bullet were both surprised by a black or Latino man wearing jeans and a hoodie who leaped out of the bushes into the midst of 10 to 12 young San Franciscans hanging out in the park, according to Golden Gate National Recreation Area spokeswoman Chris Powell.

After "some interaction" the gunman shot two of the members of the group at around 10 p.m. last night. While the shooting took place adjacent to a youth hostel and the identities of the victims have not been released, Powell states that both of the victims are San Francisco residents -- and were not guests at the hostel. Powell said she is unaware if the shooter demanded money or goods prior to opening fire. His age, height, or other relevant information is not currently known.

It appears the shooter and his victims did not know one another. Initial reports that the shooter was among a pack of up to eight men have not been verified.

Since the shooting took place on Fort Mason -- part of the GGNRA -- it is being investigated by the Park Police, who have called in the FBI for assistance.

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San Francisco police and the medical examiner's office have little to add regarding the suspicious Monday death of Chris Lamothe, but both noted that "a very open and active" investigation continues.

Lamothe, 31, was found bleeding at the bottom of a 12-story residential building in Park Merced at just shy of 1 a.m. on Monday. He died just over an hour later.

"He may have jumped, he may have been pushed off, he may have been through some other criminal element involved in this case," said police spokesman Officer Samson Chan. "It could have been an accident as well. He may have slipped."

Chan noted that Lamothe -- a San Bruno resident former associates tell SF Weekly was an AT&T tech -- had "no stab wounds or gunshot wounds."

A pair of officers from Ingleside Station were called to General Hospital, where a victim of an alleged aggravated assault told them an imbroglio between he and his roommate culminated with the roomie swinging a metal pole at the victim. When the victim covered his head, the pole sent a fingertip on his left hand scuttling off to parts unknown.

The police then traveled to what we're assuming was an immaculately kept home on the 100 block of Vienna in the Excelsior. While the suspect was nowhere to be found, his alleged handiwork was; the cops found the fingertip.

The digit was driven to the hospital. The roommate remains at large.

How many cookies did I eat?

​There's a reason Reefer Madness has become a laugh riot among bong-toting college students across the realm. After all, you don't have to be stoned into the next dimension to get a laugh out of earnest depictions of marijuana turning people into crazed, violent killers and rapists. And boom microphones dropping into the shot are funny, too.

Well, enter Kinman Chan. The 30-year-old San Francisco man is using the "The Pot Made Me Do It" defense regarding a mid-air outburst in which he fought with US Air personnel and forced his Philadelphia-to-Los Angeles flight to land in Pittsburgh. According to flight crew members, Chan ransacked an airplane bathroom while screaming, then emerged from the commode with his pants down and his shirt untucked. After refusing to take a seat, he grappled with flight atendants. He now claims he popped twice his normal dosage of medical marijuana cookies -- which, apparently, explains it all.

Well, not for Aaron Smith. The California director of the Marijuana Policy Project said Chan may have some problems -- but too much pot isn't one of them. "Most anecdotal evidence shows marijuana makes you even more subdued. [Violence] is something alcohol is linked to when you hear about problems on airplanes," he said. "I'm definitely dubious of this claim."

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A bleeding man discovered at the base of a 12-story residential structure at 12:54 this morning -- who died an hour later -- was moments ago identified by the San Francisco Medical Examiner as 31-year-old Christopher Lamothe of San Bruno.

Details were sparse and a police investigation is ongoing related to the incident on the 300 block of Arballo. Left unanswered:

• Did Lamothe die after a fall from the building or from other causes?

• What was he doing in Park Merced, so far from home?

• Is this considered a potential homicide or, at least, a suspicious death?

More when we know more.

​Homeless sex offenders in San Francisco will find out whether they'll be able to finally move indoors on Monday. The state Supreme Court will issue its decision about the constitutionality of the Jessica's Law restrictions banning sex offenders from living 2,000 feet from a school or park -- which, in San Francisco, have forced nearly all paroled sex offenders into homelessness.

SF Weekly ran a cover story about the conundrum last month: Sex offenders paroled to the city after voters passed Jessica's Law in November 2006 must live in enforced homelessness because there are virtually no areas in the dense city that are compliant with the restrictions.

San Francisco attorney Ernest Galvan filed suit against the law on behalf of four sex offenders, arguing the unconstitutionality of forcing people onto the streets. He charged that the foot restrictions were a violation of the ex post facto statute that a person can't be retroactively punished by law that wasn't on the books when he or she committed the crime.

Angelina Mavilia, a male-to-female transgender woman, claims Eric Green met her at a Scottsdale, Ariz. casino on Jan. 24, 2009. Green, who spent the preseason with the 49ers this year and has also played for the Arizona Cardinals and Miami Dolphins, was a Cardinal at the time of the alleged meeting.

According to Mavilia's lawsuit -- filed last week in southern Florida, where Green resides -- he convinced her to accompany him to his condo so "he could telephone his dealer, get some marijuana, and get high" and "introduce her to his friend, the Prince of Bahrain."

The Prince of Bahrain's puzzling cameo in this lawsuit is ever so brief. Instead of meeting royalty, claims the document, Mavilia and Green began to engage in consensual sexual activity. This, according to the suit, would not end well.

Chow is charged with setting up a lucrative affordable-housing scam

​Kan Yin Chow, 51, has been charged with 41 felony counts and was being held on $615,000 bail, District Attorney Kamala Harris said at a press conference this morning. Chow is alleged to have stolen roughly $35,000 from his victims.

"He took advantage of vulnerable individuals who were simply seeking to have access to better and more affordable housing," Harris said. "If he was a public official, he probably would have been charged with bribery."

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San Francisco's Medical Examiner is not yet ready to release the identity of a man shot dead last night during a home-invasion robbery.

The robbery and homicide occurred on the 2400 block of Moraga near 31st Avenue in the Outer Sunset. Police have told the media that other victims of the robbery were found tied up but unharmed.

This is the city's sixth homicide of the year and first since homeless man Edward Holloway was accused of killing Matthew Adams earlier this month by beating him with a boom box radio.

UPDATE: The murdered man's name was Xiao "Ben" Xiong Luo -- and police suspect he was running a brothel.

Read the following in your favorite crazed used auto dealer TV commercial voice:

Homicides? We've cut them by 18.2 percent! Aggravated assaults -- say goodbye to 4.6 percent. Burglaries? We've stolen 2.8 percent and passed the savings on to you! Motor vehicle theft: Drive away with a 17.9 percent reduction! Robbery: This 8.5 percent reduction ought to be a crime! Larceny (theft over $400) -- our 12 percent drop ought to also be a crime! Forcible rape: We don't make jokes about forcible rape! But now we don't make jokes 0.6 percent less of the time than before!

The numbers reported by the San Francisco Police Department weren't across-the-board reductions. But you can't win 'em all:

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The distinctive tattoo in question?

Police spokesman Officer Boaz Marilies told SF Weekly that Harding has the words "Chedda Boy" emblazoned across his left hand.

Now, that's just cheesy. (Sorry!)

Aspiring ne'er-do-wells, take heed: Don't wear T-shirts that read "I'm going to rob you." Don't snatch someone's purse and then hand them your business card. And if you simply must rob Muni patrons who are just going about their daily commute, maybe you should use your right hand. You know, the one that doesn't have a distinctive tattoo the whole Gang Task Force knows about.

I've got your Ellis Act right here...

​Virtually every San Franciscan has his or her own landlord horror story. It may involve bogus move-in evictions, rent-gouging, or even housing the landlord's mentally imbalanced son in the apartment next door, where he plays the bongos for hours on end to stave off the troubling breakdowns in which he breaks the furniture and smashes the windows.

Well, a Bernal Heights tenant can top all that. On Monday, the police were called to the 700 block of San Jose Avenue to intercede in a landlord-renter dispute that culminated when "the landlord wielded a large kitchen knife at the tenant and threatened to kill the tenant."

This, we believe, would qualify as both a rent control violation and wrongful eviction. 

Ruby Ordenana was raped and murdered in 2007. DNA evidence collected from her body matches suspect Donzell Francis.

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In late December, a jury had convicted him of forcible oral copulation, robbery, assault, and causing great bodily injury to Lena, a transgender prostitute whom he picked up in the Tenderloin in September of 2007. She wasn't Francis's first victim, and police are still unraveling multiple sexual assault cases that he appears to be involved with.

In 2001, Francis admitted to slashing a woman's face with a razor, and he went to prison for five years. In 2004, his DNA was placed in a state databank, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. 

In 2007, after Francis got out on parole, a string of transgender prostitutes were reportedly raped, and one of those -- Ruby Ordenana -- was also strangled to death and left naked near Interstate-280 in Potrero Hill.

The case has spurred not one but two investigative television shows -- a segment of CBS' 48 Hours Mystery and a documentary titled Suicide or Murder: A Case For the Truth that aired on French television. Bay Area viewers who don't settle down to watch French TV can this week view the latter documentary in its premier Bay Area public screening. But there's a catch: The show is in French and there are no subtitles. So if you can't decipher the following, you may well be sunk:

The story certainly is heartbreaking enough -- though SF Weekly has learned that JoJo has since been found in Marin and reunited with the Gaffneys. But what caught our attention was the lead on KTVU's Web article -- but not on the television report -- that San Francisco police claim dog thefts are on the uptick. When we called the police, they said they have no statistics to back up that claim. The SFPD is processing SF Weekly's immediate disclosure request for all statistics regarding animal thefts in San Francisco. KTVU's claim that dog thefts are on the rise may well be accurate -- but the officers we spoke with in the public information office have no idea who gave out that information or what statistics they were basing that statement on.

Things grow even more complicated when you begin to parse what the word "theft" means. When we dialed San Francisco's Animal Care and Control office, we were told that if someone takes an unattended dog from the front of, say, the Safeway on Market and Church, and then calls Animal Control to report a "found" animal, this is not considered a "theft." In order for theft to have occurred, someone ostensibly would have to remove the animal from your home, yard, or vehicle.

This was police chief George Gascon's take,  expressed at a community press conference this afternoon regarding the police department's nascent prostitution enforcement operation in the Russian Hill and Polk Street neighborhoods.

Two weeks into the operation, police officials said, they have arrested 36 female prostitutes and 15 johns, almost all of whom hail from outside the city. (The police have not observed any male prostitutes in the area, Lieutenant Tom Cleary of Vice Crimes noted.) Two of the prostitutes were from Los Angeles, two from Las Vegas, one from San Diego, and one, oddly enough, from South Carolina. Others were from Berkeley, Oakland, Vallejo, and Sacramento. All but one of the johns were from outside San Francisco -- but none of them had made the trek from South Carolina. 

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Byrnes' case is currently being heard in the city's Behavioral Health Court -- over the strenuous objection of the District Attorney. Yet a decision today regarding the presentation of expert reports may or may not shunt the case back to regular criminal court.

Witnesses in August reported to police that a shirtless Byrnes struck his dog, Nickel, with a hatchet outside the Bernal Heights Catholic church before dragging the prone animal within. Police called to the scene relayed a grisly tale of a bloody trail leading them to Byrnes' blood-soaked clothes and weapon. The officers spotted Byrnes in a church courtyard, nude and slathered in blood, squatting over his dog. He then allegedly told the police "I had to kill my dog, he had the devil in him."

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Update, Tuesday: Police now claim Edward Holloway beat Matthew A. Adams, who later died, with "a boom box."

Matthew A. Adams refused medical attention after being allegedly attacked without provocation near Seventh and Market in the Tenderloin Saturday. A few hours later, the 38-year-old was dead. One day later, reports the Chronicle, police arrested Edward W. Holloway, a homeless man with an alleged history of attacking people on the street.

Adams is the first homicide in the city since 34-year-old Rodney Curiel was found dead in his Mission hotel room on Jan. 13 and Carley A. McFarland was gunned down at a barbecue gone awry on Jan. 7.

Pending a medical examiner's ruling, Holloway could be charged with a homicide in the Adams case; as it is he's facing assault charges.

SFPD

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Turns out, the police in Boston had been looking for Jeffrey since September of last year, when he allegedly flashed someone at a transit station.

Charged with committing a lewd act against a child, Jeffrey is being held in San Francisco County Jail awaiting extradition.

Police are asking other potential victims to report the incident immediately.

 

Psychologist Dr. Amy Watt came to that conclusion in a detailed nine-page report delivered today in court. The contents of that report, minus the sections quoted today in open court, are confidential.

Three of Brown's alleged attacks took place on Muni including the knifing of 11-year-old Hatim Mansori in September on the No. 49 bus.

The next scheduled court date for Brown is Feb. 8. His defense has brought up the possibility of bringing in its own expert to gauge Brown's mental competence. Should the defense contest Watt's finding, the next step in this case would be a trial to determine Brown's mental competence. The date for that potential trial would be set on Feb. 8.

  

Is Bruce there?

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Police claim Griffin, 26, left his cell phone behind in Singh's cab -- a major impediment for anyone hoping to commit the perfect crime. And, according to a source close to the investigation, Griffin's alleged gaffe was a gift that just kept giving for police.

Shortly after the cops arrived at the scene, the blood-soaked phone rang and police answered it. The man at the other end asked for Bruce.