Officers kill gunman aiming at S.F. hospital
Police officers fatally shot an armed man who climbed to the sixth floor of a construction site in San Francisco’s Mission District on Wednesday and aimed one of his two guns at nearby St. Luke’s Hospital, authorities said.
The man fired at least one round before being shot to death, but police did not say whether that shot was directed at the adjacent hospital. No one was hit, police said.
The man, who wore white coveralls and appeared to be in his late 20s, ascended to the sixth of seven floors of the incomplete building around 4:15 p.m. after robbing a Big 5 Sporting Goods store in San Bruno, a little more than 10 miles away, said San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr.
He said the man had committed the robbery with a handgun
and emerged with a second firearm — one of the store’s shotguns — as well as ammunition shells.
As San Bruno police began probing the robbery, San Francisco officers responding to witness reports of the armed man at the construction site on Cesar Chavez Street came upon the man and shot him, said police Cmdr. Toney Chaplin.
Officer Grace Gatpandan said officers heard shots being fired when they arrived, and saw the man pointing a gun at the hospital from atop a construction elevator. He then pointed it at approaching officers, she said. Three officers shot at the man, who was struck and died at the scene, Gatpandan said.
Both weapons were found on the man after he was killed, Suhr said, and the getaway car from the San Bruno gun heist also was recovered.
Suhr said the man, who was not immediately identified, “appeared to be firing” as officers arrived. There were no reports of any other injuries, which the chief called “very fortunate.”
The man’s motives were not immediately known. “We have no idea why he did what he did at the construction site,” Suhr said.
The man died in a large, open-air construction elevator that was stopped on the sixth floor of the building, but Suhr said workers speculated he had gotten into the elevator after climbing up stairs.
The shooting happened at a 120-bed hospital and medical building that St. Luke’s is constructing near its current hospital at Cesar Chavez and Valencia streets.
A camera pointed toward the building, operated by a company called OxBlue that provides time-lapse footage of construction projects, shows a man in white coveralls slumped against the side of the construction elevator at 4:30 p.m. Fourteen minutes later, the camera shows two police officers on the building’s roof, one pointing a rifle at the man.
Within minutes, several other officers appeared on the roof, while other officers were a floor below and elsewhere at the project. It wasn’t clear which floor the officers that killed the man fired from.
Marie Washington, the night security supervisor at the construction site, said other construction workers told her that the armed man gained access to the site by jumping the back fence. One of the workers called 911, and as she met the two police officers who responded, she heard one gunshot.
The officers waited for backup, and then went in. At that point, she said she heard about five more gunshots.
Many of the workers left on their own when they heard that first shot, but several workers were on the top floor of a nearby building, unaware of what was happening. The other workers had to shout up at them to warn them, Washington said.
“Normally, it’s very quiet,” she said. “Usually nothing goes on at nighttime.”
Elijah Romero, 15, said he was skating with friends near 26th and Valencia streets around 4 p.m. when he saw people hiding behind a truck.
“We just heard, ‘Run, run, run, run!’ ” he said. “And we ran.”
They ducked inside a Salvation Army building and heard what Elijah said sounded like five gunshots and two small explosions between 4:15 and 4:45 p.m. Finally, he and his friends looked out the window and saw two officers standing over a prone man at the construction site.
“This is like the most violent and crazy event I’ve ever seen,” he said.
The fatal shooting of the suspect occurred about half an hour after he robbed the Big 5 store at 855 El Camino Real, San Bruno police said.
The “suspect entered the store, produced a handgun, stole a firearm (and) fled on foot,” said Lt. Tim Mahon.