January 10, 2008
Witness Protection Program Escapee Killed in the Mission
It turns out that the man who was brutally gunned down in the Mission on Monday night recently ditched a witness protection program. Justin Lee, 40 - who was shot to death after being chased down on 26th and Mission Streets - just left the security of a safe house in another part of the state on the same day. Yikes.
Going back a bit, it seems that in 2005 Lee had "taken the stand last year and identified Sean 'Smiley' Robinson, 39, as the man who had shot him multiple times on 24th and Vermont streets on Potrero Hill." It is believed that the first unsuccessful attempt at Lee's life was an effort "to silence him for what he may have known about a homicide in which Robinson was suspected."
Even though Lee was repeatedly warned by both police and prosecutors "not to come back to the city, unless under armed escort to return to court," he did. And he died.
Although Robinson has been in custody since the 2005 shooting, it is still not clear whether or not Lee's murder had anything to do with the aforementioned case. But...probably. It sounds like the protection program did all they could to help the guy. Why he felt the need to return to San Francisco, much less back to the Mission District, piques our curiosity.
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Wasn't there another case in the past few years of a protected witness getting greased when they returned to the city? Seems to be a running theme.
Wasn't there another case in the past few years of a protected witness getting greased when they returned to the city?
Arkeylius Collins. A little over 2 years ago. They give some details about that case in the article.
wow this is just like "The Wire"....
The running theme appears to be "morons who intentionally put themselves in situations where it's pretty much a guarantee they'll be murdered."
No witness protection program protects against blatant stupidity, I guess.
Yep - couldn't have said it better myself, blucanary.
I smell a new tourism advertising slogan, "People are dying to come back to San Francisco."
Ba dum bum
bluecanary -
I concur - this can be applied to the Dhaliwal brothers, et al. as well.
Arkeylius Collins was killed in 2005, standing right next to Terrell Rollins, who subsequently agreed to testify against Arkeylius' alleged murderers, joined witness protection, and was killed in May 2006 when he decided to return to some auto body shop in SF.
Before Justin Lee, he was the last person in witness protection to be murdered, and like Justin Lee, probably sealed his fate when he came back to precisely the same hood he should've avoided.
And of course, when I turned on the tv this evening, channel 2 news was on, and their stupid teaser said something to the effect of "another person in SF's witness protection program killed" -- deliberately leaving out the part where they were killed after leaving the program. Yeah, they mentioned it in the actual story, but that doesn't excuse them for giving blatantly misleading information for the sake of hooking viewers in.
This is nothing new of course, as tv news has been getting worse and worse, but it still pisses me off.
Was "Arkelius" Collins named for "R. Kelly"?
what is the world coming too? too many people are scared to do the right thing because as you see that don't want to end up like Lee or Rollins. i just want to send my love to Justins family. In 2005 just before justin got shoot on Vermont street Justin's brother John was murdered in the Army Street Projects. This is really sad. I'm just wondering what the police are doing about this???? another unsovled murder.
Rip to all that was trying to Do The Right Thang.