You might remember a Halloween 2012 shooting at a Fort Mason party in which (then 21-year-old) Benjamin Passah was shot in the head, and ultimately given only a 25 percent chance to live. Passah spent three weeks in a coma, his recovery made national news when he was able to speak by Thanksgiving of that year, and his recuperation is now nearly full, save for some memory loss.
It will be understandably difficult for him to forget that the guy who shot him in the head is back on the streets. ABC 7 reports that a judge released suspect Hun Saelee while he awaits a new trial in July. A jury acquitted Saelee of six felony charges in April, but hung on two other charges of attempted murder and assault with a firearm.
"He spent four and a half years locked away when I spent four and a half years in an institution bettering myself everyday trying to improve myself because of the unfortunate circumstance that happened to me," Pessah, the victim, told ABC 7.
Saelee's attorneys argue this is a fair outcome. "He was acting in self-defense against a hate crime assault," San Francisco Assistant Public Defender Vilaska Nguyen said.
Nguyen is referring to the defense's case, which alleges that Saelee was running from several men Pessah's group after Pessah accused him of groping his date. According to an April statement from the Public Defender's Office following Saelee's no-conviction trial, "Two men in the group chased Saelee back to his car where they cornered him, hurling threats and anti-Asian slurs" and Saelee then brandished a weapon, for which he had a concealed carry permit, "hoping to scare the men away." Only after this did he fire "into the air," not intending to hit Pessah.
Saelee will have a GPS monitor on him and will live under other court-ordered conditions. But the outcome is still difficult for Pessah and his legal team to accept.
"There was brain matter on the pavement as a result of the gunshot wound. We were completely opposed to his release," San Francisco District Attorney Spokesman Alex Bastian told ABC 7.
Ironically, as SFist reported at the time, the name of the name of the 2012 Fort Mason Halloween party was True Blood Halloween 3.
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