Sep 5, 2008 8:46 pm US/Pacific
2 Goodwill Employees Latest SF Shooting Victims
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5 / KCBS) ―
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A body of a Goodwill worker is covered on the sidewalk near the intersection of 24th St. and Utah in San Francisco Thursday night.
CBS
Two young men who were the latest victims gunned down in San Francisco's troubled Mission District never hesitated to help someone in need, their co-workers at Goodwill Industries of the Bay Area said Friday.
Gunfire claimed the lives of 19-year-old Noel Espinoza and 23-year-old Matthew Solomon Thursday night.
They were out celebrating a promotion with another co-worker who was also injured in the shooting at 10:30 p.m. near the corner of Utah Street and 24th Street. She was expected to survive.
"The staff is devastated," said Debbie Alvarez-Rodriguez, the non-profit's president and CEO."They took the extra step. They stayed the extra hour. They did whatever it took."
In the past decade, 10 of her employees have been killed by gunfire. She gave most of her staff the day off Friday to grieve, and offered employees counseling in person and by telephone.
The deaths of Sullivan and Espinoza put the tally in the neighborhood at close to a dozen. Police Chief Heather Fong announced a new strategy Friday to calm the violence in the Mission District that has flared during the past two weeks. More police officers, in and out of uniform, will be deployed throughout the area.
"The violence in the Mission is unacceptable," Fong said. "The people who are involved in gang activity, drug activity and have totally no regard whatsoever for the community have taken it upon themselves to shoot and harm and kill."
Fong said police would work more closely with probation and parole officers, since many of the city's homicide victims during the last two years either had prior contact with police, or were on some kind of probation or parole.
Espinoza and Solomon did not have ties to gangs or drugs, Alvarez-Rodriguez said, but struggled at times to turn around lives that had been, at times, very difficult.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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