District Attorney Chesa Boudin formally filed multiple felony charges on Monday against the 45-year-old man accused in a hit-and-run collision last week in SoMa that killed two women.
SF resident Troy Ramon McAlister now faces charges that include vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, hit-and-run, gun possession, and vehicle theft. And it seems that Boudin is increasingly feeling heat over the case as multiple news stories have told the story of a convicted felon given a plea deal last spring, only to re-offend multiple times, while the state parole system and local law enforcement failed to crack down on his behavior.
Referring to the two victims in the collision, 27-year-old Hanako Abe of San Francisco, and 60-year-old Elizabeth Platt, Boudin issued a statement Monday saying, "My entire office is distraught over this, and our hearts break for the families of Ms. Abe and Ms. Platt.”
Boudin added that the case was “an example of many different agencies each failing to intervene effectively." One of those, as we just learned, was the Daly City Police Department, which failed to track McAlister down following an alleged December 29 car theft — after which the victim, a woman who was on a date with him, apparently gave them McAlister's name and address.
“Although of course no one predicted this tragedy, it is true that the Daly City Police, the San Francisco Police, Parole, and my office all could have done things differently, which might have avoided this terrible outcome," Boudin said. "I have to start with what we could have done differently in house and we are carefully reviewing what happened and how the District Attorney’s Office can work to prevent tragedies like this from occurring in the future. I am implementing concrete changes to our longstanding practices regarding referrals to other agencies. We are committed to working with our law enforcement partners — including police agencies and parole — to make systematic changes effective immediately.”
Boudin gave an interview Monday to ABC 7, calling the case an example of "systemic failure."
The Police Officers' Association (POA) has come after Boudin, as KPIX reports, calling out the fact that Boudin's name was apparently listed on a court docket for McAllister in 2018 when Boudin worked in the Public Defender's Office — though Boudin's office now denies that he ever represented McAlister in court.
Wanting, as ever, to discredit Boudin, the POA referred to the docket and said that Boudin should recuse himself in the McAlister case as a former public defender, due to "potential conflicts of interests in criminal cases."
Photo courtesy of Chesa Boudin
