One man has been arrested for killing the central figure in a high-profile 2019 police brutality case that dominated SF headlines during the Chesa Boudin days, as the SFPD has arrested a 43-year-old man for the June fatal shooting of Dacari Spiers.
We reported in June on a fatal shooting in the Mission District, where an unnamed man was shot at about 4 am the morning of Saturday, June 15. The Chronicle reported that the victim “was at an illegal gambling operation when he was shot,” and in the days afterward, we learned the victim was Dacari Spiers, who’d been in the news for suffering a grievous 2019 police beating in Fisherman’s Wharf that led to a high-profile criminal trial of the police officer in 2022.
There were no suspects at the time we first learned that Spiers was the victim. But now, more than three weeks after the shooting, Mission Local reports that SFPD has made an arrest in Spiers’ killing, and the alleged shooter is 43-year-old Hin Hoang.
Hoang was arrested in the early morning hours of Wednesday, July 3, at private residence on Harold Street between Holloway and Grafton streets. Per Mission Local, Hoang had previously faced gun and marijuana charges in 2006.
Dacari Spiers unintentionally ended up in the news after the night of October 6, 2019, when police responded to a domestic violence call allegedly involving Spiers near Fisherman's Wharf. The police response quickly turned violent, and SFPD Officer Terrance Stangel beat the unarmed Spiers repeatedly with a baton, breaking his wrist and leg, and leaving him in the condition seen below.
Spiers was never charged over the incident, and was awarded a $700,000 civil settlement for his injuries. Then-DA Chesa Boudin charged Officer Stangel with assault and battery in late 2020, resulting in what was believed to be the first known excessive-force trial for charges brought against an SFPD officer acting in the line of duty.
The high-profile trial was a big local news story in 2022, as police claimed that Boudin’s office buried evidence that would have proven Spiers’s guilt regarding the domestic violence charge. Spiers and his then-girlfriend both testified that there was no domestic violence. But the jury sided with Officer Stangel, acquitting him of three charges and deadlocking on a fourth charge.
Spiers is reportedly survived by two children, according to Mission Local. He was 36.
