Sep 6, 2008 6:16 pm US/Pacific
Newsom Troubled After Yet Another Mission Shooting
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5 / KCBS / BCN) ―
Despite a surge in violence - some of it deadly - in San Francisco's Mission District, Mayor Gavin Newsom said violent crime down and so is the city's homicide rate this year.
But Newsome acknowledged that another shooting in the Mission District early Saturday was troublesome.
A 19-year-old San Francisco man was injured in that shooting, which was less than 24 hours after and about nine blocks away from where two men were fatally shot Thursday, police said.
The teenager was walking west on 23rd Street at Treat Avenue in a group of four when at least one suspect in an unknown vehicle traveling south on Treat Avenue shot at the group at about 4:45 a.m., San Francisco police Sgt. Wilfred Williams said.
The 19-year-old was struck with gunfire and transported to San Francisco General Hospital. He is expected to survive his injuries, Williams said.
The three others in the group were not injured, and police were investigating whether the shooting was gang-related. Williams said no suspects have been arrested.
"All of the law enforcement in the world is not going to create a peaceful environment," said Mayor Newsom. "I don't want to get into the details of these investigations, but you got folks from all over the Bay Area who happen to be in San Francisco doing things that they shouldn't be doing."
Police announced Friday that they were re-grouping and adding more beat cops and a number of undercover officers to the troubled area.
Saturday's shooting at 23rd and Treat comes on the heels of a double murder late Thursday of two friends who had tried to escape troubled lives by finding work at Goodwill Industries. They were shot and killed on the edge of Mission District.
The double-homicide Thursday night, which marked the fifth and sixth murders in the Mission District in the past two weeks and the 10th and 11th homicides so far this year in that area, claimed the lives of San Mateo County resident Matthew Solomon, 23, and Noel Espinoza, 19, of San Francisco, according to police.
The mayor and police have said that witnesses have been reluctant to come forward in many of these Mission District shooting cases.
(© CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Bay City News contributed to this report.)
