Homicides continue - Three dead Sunday night

By Erica Holt, Bay City News Service

August 28, 2006

Three people are dead after San Francisco police shot and killed a murder suspect Sunday night who allegedly shot at them as they were responding to a Bayview neighborhood double homicide that the suspect may have been responsible for, according to preliminary police reports.

Police Sgt. Neville Gittens said that reports of shots fired came in around 10:10 p.m. from Flora Street between Bay View Street and Thornton Avenue.

He said responding officers reported encountering a male suspect who started shooting at them and they got of out their vehicles, which had been "struck numerous times with gunfire.''

The officers returned fire, hitting the suspect, Gittens said, and the man was taken to San Francisco General Hospital and pronounced dead.

Gittens said that "based on information received from people in the area, this suspect was involved in a double homicide shooting in which two people were shot in a vehicle.''

The two victims, who were apparently adults, but have not been identified, were found dead by police investigating the Flora Street incident.

He said preliminary police reports show that the suspect who fired at police had shot and killed the two people, who were in a parked car that rolled forward and hit another car containing a wheelchair-bound man the shooting suspect knew.

The suspect went to assist his associate get into his wheelchair and out of his car before officers arrived, according to preliminary police reports, which is when the suspect opened fire on the responding officers.

The man in the wheelchair, who police believe was somehow involved in the double homicide, was arrested, Gittens said.

Earlier Sunday night, police reported a shooting in the Potrero Hill neighborhood in the 900 block of Connecticut Street, about a block from a Thursday night triple shooting that left three dead. One person was apparently shot, police reported, and is suffering from a non-life-threatening injury.

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