At 3:23 p.m. on Monday, a white tent covered a hit-and-run victimโs body to the side of the Chevron gas station at Mission Street and South Van Ness Avenue.
The vehicle fled the scene, but the driver was later arrested near Potrero Avenue and 18th Street in a coordinated effort between the police and sheriff’s departments.
Officers arrested 30-year-old Valentino Cash Amil of San Francisco and transported him to a county jail with charges of homicide and felony vehicle hit-and-run with injury.
Richard Conway Jr. was on walk with his pit bull about a block from the scene when he heard a loud bang and the sound of sirens.
Conway rushed to the corner, and saw the body of a deceased man, possibly unhoused, between 25 and 40, wearing Velcro shoes with no socks.
โI just prayed for him,โ said Conway.
The death is, by preliminary counts from the city, San Francisco’s ninth traffic fatality of the year. In 2014, the city adopted a “Vision Zero” goal to eliminate traffic deaths, but it has failed for more than 12 years running. Last year, 25 people were killed by vehicles on city streets.
On that block, Mission Street is a northbound one-way street where cars move speedily from the Mission District to downtown.
Police officers had closed the block between Mission and Market streets on Monday evening. The owner of Picacho food truck, which parks at the intersection of Mission Street and South Van Ness Avenue, waited behind the police line to identify the body.
Based on the descriptions, the food truck owner said, he suspected the victim may be one of two men who usually buys horchata from him, and hangs out in the area.
This remains an open and active investigation. Anyone with information is asked to contact the SFPD at 415-575-4444 or text a tip to TIP411 and begin the message with SFPD.
An earlier version of this story, based on witness testimony, stated the driver had remained on the scene and identified the vehicle as a truck.
“Let’s not frustrate drivers” would not be my take away from this. My deepest regrets to this man, his family, and everyone that witnessed or responded to this. Sorry that the city has failed you and the hundreds of other victims.
Thanks for putting this number in the five year context rather than treating it as an outlier.
Is this intersection on the cityโs new high injury map?
I saw the tent. It was at least 100โ in front of the crosswalk. I wonder if the person stepped out between parked cars into the middle of the street.
Jaywalking is common in the city, presumably because the cops don’t anyone for it. On the other hand Berkeley routinely tickets people for jaywalking, with the result that it doesn’t feel like it happens so much there.
Jaywalking in a high-traffic area like SOMA is particularly hazardous.
Check out California Vehicle Code 21955. It clearly assigns shared responsibility between drivers and pedestrians to avoid collisions in roadways: “This subdivision does not relieve a driver of a vehicle from the duty of exercising due care for the safety of any pedestrian within the roadway”
Those of us who did but witness this tragedy can’t know what the pedestrian was doing in the street. We can just as easily guess that the driver was speeding and/or distracted by a screen or phonecall as we can try to blame the victim for his death.
“Jaywalking” was invented as a marketing term to take the streets away from pedestrians who had been sharing them with horses, wagons, and trolleys prior to the popularity of private car travel. Check out old film of downtown SF to see how that worked.
Cities are for people. Cars belong in cities only as much as they improve the lives of those on the city. They should be restrained to the point at which they no longer cause harm to others.
Very sad. This driver needs to be prosecuted to the fullest for his hit and run. We can not shrug off that conduct. It may (or may not) be that the driver is cleared of fault in the death itself, depending on the pedestrian’s conduct, but we cannot allow people to flee an accident. Obviously, he should be charged for the death as well if he is found to have been at fault, but we’ll have to wait for the investigation. The hit and run is clear cut. Very good news they apprehended him so quickly. By the way, we have police drones in the air and other cameras all over (via Measure E) , so you’re going to get identified if you flee.
SFAtty, drivers leave the scene because the penalties for a DUI can be worse than the penalties for leaving the scene. That can motivate a driver to take off rather than accept a certain DUI rap and ban.
I tend not to cross at crosswalks.
It’s exponentially more dangerous cause you can get wacked in so many ways.
This goes double for the crosswalks at Mission and Van Ness.
Drivers be crazy – except Waymo – you can step right in front of one at any time and it will stop. At least to this point they’ve stopped.
Anyway – you’re protected by parked cars as you peak out and wait.
Wait is the key word here.
When the coast is clear (watch out for motorcycles), briskly jog across the street and out of harms way.
Now – this only applies to streets that don’t have motorcycle lanes next to the sidewalk. Man – that’s scary. Gotta really keep focus cause they’re coming at you at 20-30 MPH. No headlight. Hard to pick ’em out. Surprised there aren’t more serious collisions within this scenario.
Stop signs are a mere suggestion.
Pedestrians are an impediment.
Sidewalks are bike and motorcycle lanes (even when there’s a “bike” lane on the street!).
A yellow light means floor it.
It’s just going to get worse until an army of troopers start giving out $1000 tickets and impounding the vehicles of nutso drivers/riders.
Is it just me, or have the Waymos been getting more aggressive lately? Just last week I saw one push through the intersection of 16th & Guerrero at the tail end of a yellow light at 16th & Guerrero. The light turned red as it was halfway through the intersection. Only 20 minutes later I saw another one insert itself halfway through the intersection of 16th & Valencia and get stuck there on a red as it attempted a right turn. The human driver behind it stopped right in the middle of the crosswalk. I attempted to cross the street behind the human driver, at which point they nearly hit me when they attempted to back up (without looking behind them apparently) to clear space for pedestrians in the crosswalk.
I have also noticed that the Waymoโs are getting more aggressive. Must be the Manila drivers.
Thank you for humanizing this sad story. Thank you for not just writing the same terse haiku that I see repeated over and over throughout the year at other media outlets: person killed by vehicle, at such and such time in such and such intersection, driver stayed on the scene and cooperated (if it wasn’t a hit-and-run, and as if staying on the scene somehow makes it OK to kill someone.)
This will just be used as an excuse to further impede city traffic, frustrating drivers even more. If the city really wanted to elimiate traffic deaths it would strongly embrace autonomous vehicles – they have an 8-fold reduction in accidents per million miles driven verses humans.