There was a potential major break in four separate cases, three of them cold for decades, this week in San Francisco with the arrest of a 44-year-old man who stands accused of a fatal shooting in 2019 and three killings 17 years earlier.

Sauntek Harris, a well known community activist in Bayview-Hunters Point, made a court appearance Wednesday facing murder charges in four separate slayings, as NBC Bay Area reports.

According to police, while Harris was working as a life coach at a community center at the Oakdale housing project in August 2019 when 34-year-old Dietrich Whitley was fatally shot during an event at the community center.

Harris, who was then a resident of Concord, was arrested on suspicion of the shooting at the time, and charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm, but the case was ultimately dropped on a self-defense argument — Harris's public defender, Landon Davis, argued that Whitley was armed with a knife and that the two men had clashed previously.

But Harris was seen on surveillance video ducking behind a vehicle and firing six shots at Whitley, one of which hit him in the chest.

Now, as prosecutors refile murder charges in that case, SFPD investigators say they have evidence linking Harris with three killings in 2002.

One of those involved the robbery, carjacking, and fatal January 2002 shooting of 37-year-old Perry Michael Bradstreet. A reward in the cold case was recently raised to $100,000, and a new composite sketch of the suspect was released, which may have led to the new charges against Harris, as NBC Bay Area reports.

A second suspect, Shaun Britton, is also being charged in the death of Bradstreet alongside Harris.

Another shooting seven months later, in July 2002, has now been lined to Harris as well. In that incident, 37-year-old Gerald White was fatally shot three days after he had been summoned as a witness in the Bradstreet shooting.

There was also a fatal shooting linked to Harris in February 2002 that left Lorenzo Richards dead inside an apartment building on George Court in Hunters Point. A reward for information in that cold case was also raised to $100,000 last month.

Davis, Harris's defense attorney, tells NBC Bay Area this week, "I have serious concerns about the strength of the evidence in this case, especially given the fact that these cases are from 2002 – almost 25 years old – as well as the process that led to the charges." Davis added that his client is a wrongly accused family man, and that the 2019 homicide of Whitley was justifiable.

Harris is being held without bail, and his next court hearing is on June 6.

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