Previously: SFPD Nabs Suspect In Muni Stop Attack
San Francisco police have increased patrols along the Bayview District’s Third Street corridor in response to three assaults in the past two months at or near San Francisco Municipal Railway T-Third light rail stops.
Police are investigating whether any of the incidents, including one in which an elderly man was attacked and later died, are related.
In all three cases, the victims were assaulted in the early evening by groups of boys ages 14 to 16, according to police. All three victims were Asian, but police said there is no evidence at this point that the attacks were racially motivated.
The latest assault occurred Saturday between 7:30 p.m. and 7:45 p.m. on a Muni train pulling into the stop at Third Street and Williams Avenue, police spokesman Officer Albie Esparza said.
Esparza said the victim, a 29-year-old man riding a southbound train, was punched repeatedly by five to seven boys as he tried to exit the train. The boys said nothing and ran out of the train at the station.
The victim stayed on the train and reported the attack to the conductor, who called police. The man was treated at a hospital for minor injuries.
On March 22, five boys attacked a 57-year-old woman on a Muni platform at Third Street and Oakdale Avenue–two stops north of where Saturday’s assault happened–at about 7:30 p.m., according to police.
One of the suspects threw the woman from the platform onto the tracks and continued to assault her, police said. She was later treated for her injuries, which were not considered life-threatening.
That attack was caught on Muni surveillance video, and police on Wednesday arrested a 15-year-old San Francisco boy believed to have thrown the woman onto the tracks. The boy, who has not been named, was charged with assault.
On Jan. 24 at about 6:20 p.m., five boys assaulted 83-year-old Huan Chen, after he left a bus stop at Third Street and Oakdale Avenue, police said.
Chen, a San Francisco resident, was taken to San Francisco General Hospital with a head injury and died on March 19, according to police.
The medical examiner’s office is still investigating whether the injuries from the assault directly caused Chen’s death, and has not yet ruled the case a homicide.
The motives for all three attacks are still being investigated, but none of the victims was robbed, police said.
Anyone with information about the three cases, or who may have been the victim of a similar incident, is asked to call the Bayview station at (415) 671-2300 or the anonymous tip line at (415) 575-4444.
The attacks have prompted Bayview station officers to step up patrols along the Third Street corridor, Esparza said.
Police are trying to determine whether the suspects from Saturday’s assault were captured on Muni surveillance video or on nearby street cameras, Esparza said.
