A 65-year old Asian woman killed in a shooting in Oceanview neighborhood. 2 construction workers also shot.#ABC7now pic.twitter.com/UAZTfvtEdG
— Lyanne Melendez (@LyanneMelendez) March 29, 2017
A 65-year-old woman was shot and killed on an oft-violent San Francisco street corner Wednesday, the victim of a triple shooting that left two other men injured.
The slaying occurred at 10:40 a.m. Wednesday, the San Francisco Police Department says, at the corner of Plymouth Avenue and Broad Street.
It's a corner familiar to those who follow crime in the city, plagued by violence and death for years. There was a fatal shooting during a 2015 robbery, for example, a double shooting that killed one and injured another in October of 2016, and another fatal shooting this January that claimed the life of 18-year-old Josiah Lightfoot.
In Wednesday's incident, which an SFPD spokesperson confirms is the city's 15th homicide for 2017, police say that gunfire from a handgun struck a 40-year-old man, a 51-year-old man, and a 65-year-old woman. All three were transported to San Francisco General Hospital, where the female victim, who was identified by the San Francisco Medical's Examiner as SF resident Lian Xiu Wu, was pronounced dead on arrival. The male victims' injuries were not life-threatening, police say.
ABC 7 reports that at the time of the shooting, Wu was walking on the street, near the other two victims: A contractor who worked for Muni, and a 50-year-old computer repairman who was walking home from the store.
Based on shell casings collected at the scene, at least 11 rounds were fired at the victims, according to ABC 7. The Ex reports that witnesses "saw or heard a car drive by before hearing multiple shots and saw bloodied bodies on the ground."
San Francisco Supervisor Ahsha Safai tells NBC Bay Area that he believes that the shooting is the latest salvo in an area turf battle, but emphasized to the Ex that “All we know is that one innocent bystander was killed and two innocent bystanders were shot."
According to the Chron, Wu was "a well-known figure in the neighborhood" and "lived just steps from where she was shot."
“The lady, she was just going home,” Gwen Brown, executive director of a nearby nonprofit group called Inner City Youth told the Chron.
“She lived right there. Her sister came out and she didn’t know what was happening, and then she walked up and saw it was her sister and started screaming.”
According to a Go Fund Me page set up to help with funeral arrangements for Wu, she "emigrated from China 16 years ago without her daughter" and "worked very hard to bring her daughter to America and it took 14 years before she was finally successful 2 years ago."
“I feel violated,” Brown told the Chron “Ten-forty in the morning? What were you trying to prove? And that poor lady. She was one house away from her front door. She literally died looking at her apartment building.”
Addressing the media, Taraval Station Captain Denise Flaherty said that they were conscious of the issues on that corner, and that it "continues to be a concern for us as a Police Department and, more importantly, the community."
“We are doing all we can to work in partnership with the community...to act as guardians for this community and not just to be here as a sign of enforcement.”
Safai tells the Ex that new SFPD Chief Bill Scott "recently visited the neighborhood" and "has given his assurance that foot patrols will be assigned to the area and security cameras will be installed." That uptick in security can't come too soon for residents like Adam Charles, who told ABC 7 that "It's frustrating not being able to go to my house...there are dead bodies on the street, people being shot."
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