A 20-year-old San Francisco man whose burned body was discovered two weeks ago on Treasure Island has been identified, and the suspect arrested for the killing last week had been attempting to flee on a plane from SFO.
Details have arrived in court documents relating to the January 8 murder of Amir Alkhraisat, and the suspect whom police arrested on January 23 at SFO, 21-year-old Danilo Barraza of San Francisco, is believed to have driven Alkhraisat to Treasure Island and killed him there. As the Chronicle reports, Alkhraisat disappeared on January 8 and his cellphone was turned off at 2:49 p.m. that afternoon, not long after Barraza says he was hanging out with his friend and dropped him off in SoMa after Alkhraisat received a phone call that appeared to upset him.
But surveillance video and a GPS tracking device in the vehicle Barraza rented on January 7 tell a different story. Investigators say Barraza rented a Mazda sedan for two days using the car-sharing app Turo — which lets people rent out their vehicles when they're not using them — and he returned it a day late on January 9 with clear stains on the passenger seat and headrest and a rear passenger-side window that had been replaced with different glass from the other three. The stains would later turn out to be blood.
Barraza told investigators that he and Alkhraisat were initially heading to the Oakland soul food restaurant Flip N Soul but neither of them made it there. Barraza claimed that after dropping Alkhraisat off he headed to Red's Java House on the Embarcadero to "smoke by himself." But surveillance video shows the rented Mazda exiting the Bay Bridge onto Treasure Island around 1:50 p.m. on January 8 with a figure who appears to be Alkhraisat in the passenger seat. A GPS tracking device showed that the vehicle was parked and turned off for a period of 36 minutes, sitting just feet away from where Alkhraisat's body was found badly burned in a "desolate bunker" on January 18, on the 400 block of Avenue M.
The medical examiner would later conclude that Alkhraisat had first been shot before his body was set on fire.
While the rear window of the Mazda appears intact in surveillance footage of the car arriving on Treasure Island, it appears broken in footage taken about a half hour later at a convenience store on the island, where Barraza can allegedly be seen going in and out of the passenger side of the car multiple times for 20 minutes.
A motive in the crime is not yet known, and Barraza is being held on suspicion of murder with a gun enhancement charge. The Chronicle's report on the details of the killing come via court documents filed this week by the district attorney's office, which was seeking to hold Barraza without bail.
Alkhraisat, who was reportedly a gifted soccer player, was a 2017 graduate of Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory High School in San Francisco. He was attending Skyline College in San Bruno with plans to transfer to City College, according to friends.
Police began questioning Barraza after Alkhraisat had been missing for nine days, and after Alkhraisat's parents had heard a rumor that Barraza and a second individual had killed their son and threw his body off the Bay Bridge. The Turo rental appears to have led police to discovering the body on January 18, and officers were tailing Barraza after questioning him in the investigation. He was seen leaving his house on January 23 carrying two bags, headed for the airport. He was arrested at the international terminal.