San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Disturbing case tossed in ‘interest of justice’
Parents irate charges dropped against man who grabbed girl, 15
The first gut punch of a phone call came Dec. 8 when Blaise Zerega heard from his 15yearold daughter. Her voice tearful and terrified, she whispered that she was huddled in BookShop West Portal, hiding from a stranger who’d been following her for half an hour, grabbing her and telling her they belonged together.
Call 911, Zerega told his daughter, as he leaped into his car and raced to the bookstore. The man police identified as Bill Gene Hobbs, 32, was still on the sidewalk, the letters EVIL tattooed on his fingers. He got in Zerega’s face, the father said, shouting, “I’m going to f— you up!” Police arrived and took him away in handcuffs.
The second gut punch of a phone call came June 28. when Zerega heard from the assistant district attorney assigned to his daughter’s case. A San Francisco Superior Court judge had just dismissed the entire matter. Charges of child molestation and battery? Dropped. A court order to stay away from the girl? Wiped out. Judge Russell Roeca said his ruling was “in the interest of justice.”
This time, Zerega could do nothing. There was nowhere to race. Nobody to confront. The judge had the final word, and the father was livid. In the interest of justice? Justice for whom?
“The guy’s a predator,” said Zerega, the managing editor at Alta Journal. “It boggles the mind that the judge failed to account for the safety of people in San Francisco and girls and women in particular.”
“The guy’s a predator. It boggles the mind that the judge failed to account for the safety of people in San Francisco and girls and women in particular.”
Blaise Zerega, father of girl who was followed and grabbed
So why did this happen? Figuring out the answer proved difficult, a common experience for journalists and residents alike when it comes to San Francisco’s opaque criminal justice system.
Ken Garcia, a Superior Court spokesperson, said neither he nor Roeca, appointed to the court by Gov. Gavin Newsom last year, could comment on an ongoing case, even though the case is no longer ongoing.
Police wouldn’t comment, saying they couldn’t provide records or interviews about any incident that happened more than 90 days ago, under guidance from the City Attorney’s Office.
Hobbs’ public defender, Nitin Sapra, said in a statement that a different judge had denied pretrial release for Hobbs and declared him incompetent to stand trial.
“He remained in San Francisco county jail for the maximum time allowed under the law for the crimes of which he was accused, and reached this maximum time before he could be placed at a treatment facility,” Sapra said.
It’s true he’d been held in jail since his arrest Dec. 8, but Thomas Ostly, a former prosecutor in the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office who is now a California deputy attorney general, reviewed the case for me and said that even if Roeca determined Hobbs had already served the maximum time, the judge could have released him but kept the case pending. That way, the stayaway order intended to protect the 15yearold girl would have remained in place and Hobbs could have been subject to probation and placement on the state’s sex offender’s registry. Ostly stressed he was speaking in his capacity as a former city prosecutor and not for the attorney general’s office.
Ostly said the judge could have also required that Hobbs plead guilty or no contest to the charges so they’d stay on his record. Instead, it’s as if the whole thing never happened.
Ostly also took issue with the District Attorney’s Office charging the child molestation as a misdemeanor instead of a felony. He said a felony charge would have given the prosecutors more leverage, such as compelling Hobbs to seek treatment rather than face state prison time. He added the District Attorney’s Office could also have charged Hobbs for threatening Zerega outside the bookstore.
Ostly, a critic of District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who fired him along with other prosecutors immediately upon taking office, said the District Attorney’s Office also should have notified Zerega family members of the June 28 hearing so they could have attended and expressed their objections to the judge, but Blaise Zerega said he didn’t even know it was happening. Zerega said he’d asked to be kept up to date in the case, which the prosecutor did — at first — before “everything got bogged down in delays and reschedules.”
“There is nothing I have seen about how this was handled that shows even the bare minimum of competence,” Ostly said, referring to Roeca and the District Attorney’s Office.
Rachel Marshall, a spokesperson for the District Attorney’s Office, disputed Ostly’s reading of the case. She said the office elevated the severity of the case by charging child molestation, for which police had not booked Hobbs, but said the facts of the case didn’t support charging it as a felony.
She said the office objected to Roeca’s dismissal of the case and pointed out he’s still behind bars, though not in San Francisco — Ventura County picked him up on a felony warrant for auto theft.
Records show Hobbs stands 6 feet 4 and weighs 210 pounds. He has had six criminal cases against him in San Francisco dating to 2017. They include charges of trespassing, false imprisonment, battery and giving false information to police — they were all dismissed by judges “in the interest of justice,” according to a clerk at the Superior Court who looked up the cases for me.
Zerega heard from other victims after posting his family’s story and Hobbs’ photo on Nextdoor. One was a woman who was walking her dog in Glen Canyon in November and encountered a man who was “loud and angry,” according to an email she sent to the District Attorney’s Office and shared with Zerega.
She rushed past, but Hobbs then stripped naked and ran after her, she wrote. He got very close to her, but she managed to run to other people in the canyon who helped her get away. She called 911, but it’s unclear what happened from there.
In another instance shortly before Hobbs followed Zerega’s daughter, Erin Griffin was eating lunch in the driver’s seat of her car parked outside a West Portal church. A man she identified as Hobbs opened her passenger door and appeared about to get inside.
She said in an interview she jumped out and, “He rested his head on the top of my car and just stared at me.” She kept screaming at him, she said, until he walked away. She said she called the police nonemergency number, but doesn’t know what happened after that.
That’s apparently when Hobbs spotted Zerega’s daughter, whom the family asked not be named. She spent her lunch break from Zoom school walking to West Portal’s main drag to buy paint. She’s an artist and needed new supplies.
She passed by the gas station on Claremont Boulevard when Hobbs approached her, touched her arm, called her his “angel” and “perfect mate” and told her to come with him. She rushed along, but he followed her. She popped into the art store, but he was waiting for her when she left.
He grabbed her arm and wouldn’t let go as she struggled to keep walking.
“Come with me,” he kept telling her.
“I’m flipping out, scared out of my mind,” the girl said in an interview, recalling the incident.
She raced into BookShop West Portal and hid in a corner. He followed her inside. A staff member realized what was happening and ordered Hobbs to leave.
The girl said she had crying jags, panic attacks and nightmares about Hobbs after the incident, particularly about what he might have done if the bookshop employee hadn’t helped her. She started feeling better, but the nightmares came back after she learned the judge had dismissed her case.
“I’m just really angry, honestly. A man like this who molests a child should be in jail for that,” she said, tearing up as her dad reached out to clutch her hand. “I see every person as a threat now. I’m constantly on the lookout for danger now.”
Her mother, Erin Zerega, the creative director at an advertising agency, said she’s “angry, shocked and in disbelief.”
“You do everything you can to keep your kids safe, and I was so powerless over this,” she said.
On June 29, the day after the dismissal, Blaise Zerega wrote a letter to Roeca and copied Presiding Judge Samuel Feng.
“As a citizen of San Francisco, my daughter deserves an explanation from YOU about your decision,” the letter reads in part. “I hope you are prepared to discuss her trauma, ongoing nightmares and fears about walking the streets of her own neighborhood.
“What you did is unconscionable, and we’re counting on you to fix it,” the letter continued. “We await the courtesy of a reply.”
He never received one.