A federal judge on Monday set October 22, 2018 as the trial date for a civil suit brought by the family of police shooting victim Luis Gongora Pat against the city and the two San Francisco police officers involved. The trial will come more than two years after the April 7, 2016 anniversary of the fatal encounter between Gongora Pat,...
The San Francisco City Attorney’s office said on Thursday that two San Francisco police officers lawfully killed Luis Gongora Pat, a Guatemalan immigrant, when they confronted him earlier this year in the Shotwell Street homeless encampment where he lived. The statement from City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s office came in response to Gongora Pat’s family who filed a lawsuit two months ago naming...
Since a five-alarm fire in June displaced Kimberly Walley and her husband, Henry Texada, from the single room occupancy hotel where they had been living for some five years, the couple had fallen on hard times, seemingly unplaceable by officials who had promised to find homes for all of those displaced in the fire. But on Thursday, Walley stood in...
Pacific Gas and Electric has installed temporary light fixtures at its Shotwell Street yard that the company said are an attempt to ramp up security measures, in part as a result of recent conversations with neighbors about homeless encampments in the area. The lights elicited a mixed reactions from those living in the tents, some of whom consider the bright...
The family of the 45-year-old Mayan homeless man shot by police near a Mission District tent encampment on April 7 filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city and the two officers involved on Friday. The lawsuit was filed on the six-month anniversary of Luis Gongora Pat’s death and comes on the heels of an autopsy report released last week....
For three months, Fidel Amezcua, known to most by the name Happy, fought for his life. But on Saturday the 29-year-old, who worked as a custodian for the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department, succumbed to the injuries from a gunshot wound to his abdomen that had left him in critical condition on June 26. “I want people to know...
Family and advocates seeking criminal penalties for the officers who shot Luis Gongora Pat – a 45-year-old homeless man living in the Mission District – gathered at the site of his shooting Wednesday morning to mark the five-month anniversary of his death. “I miss him very much, and I wish that he was still here,” said John Visor, a homeless...
Many of the Shotwell Street residents who heard the gunshots that claimed Rigoberto Romero’s life on Friday night had seen the 27-year-old grow up over the years. Some of them were family members. “We heard about six shots,” said Alicia Romero, the victim’s cousin. Three minutes prior, she had seen Romero speaking with his mother in their family home on Shotwell...
Clenching his dog’s leash in one hand, Ortega Flowers’ voice trembled with frustration as he recounted an interaction he had with a police officer shortly before his tent was removed during a city cleanup of a homeless encampment on Shotwell Street. “They just took my tent. My dog’s food is in there, and his brush,” said Flowers, alleging that he had...
After the two-alarm fire that engulfed a Shotwell Street senior home and burnt out its top floor last Monday night, six senior residents are in limbo, waiting to be transferred to other care facilities, according to the seniors’ caretaker. “Social workers have sent out their profiles to other residential care facilities, and if that person reviews [it] and has an...
A recent homicide, a police shooting and subsequent protests were the subjects that dominated last night’s meeting between Capt. Robert Moser of Mission Station and 18 district residents. At the past several meetings, the issue of prostitution on Shotwell Street has been addressed, and many residents brought similar concerns this time. With so many officers devoted to violent Mission hot...
