Feds file two gun cases in connection with shootings

SANFRANCISCO>> In separate filings, federal prosecutors in the Bay Area have charged two people suspected in recent Tenderloin-area shootings with being felons in possession of firearms, court records show.

In one case, Najee Ard, 31, of San Francisco, is charged with possessing a pistol that authorities allege he used to shoot three people in near the intersection of Turk and Mason streets in San Francisco. Ard was arrested in early May in connection with the April 29 shooting, which killed 27-year-old Oakland resident Kenny

Reed and wounded two others.

Ard was identified as a suspect through surveillance video showing him holding a pistol and leaving the shooting, which was also captured on video, according to the criminal complaint.

In a separate case stemming from a nearby shooting four days earlier, federal prosecutors charged Darnell Houston with being a felon in possession of two pistols and a box of ammunition that were allegedly found in a search of Houston’s Pittsburg home, the complaint claims. In that case, surveillance video allegedly shows Houston retrieving a firearm and shooting at at least one person who had fired shots at him on the 100 block of Hyde Street in San Francisco.

Houston allegedly told police he found the guns in Oakland, and he also showed investigators a mark from a bullet graze wound on his leg, the complaint alleges. When they asked if he possessed a gun during the April 25 incident, he allegedly responded, “On that incident, I believe, to be honest, I couldn’t even recall,” and later asked if his case would be determined to be “self-defense.”

The charges against both men carry up to 10 years in federal prison, court records show.