We're now learning of a shooting incident that happened last month at a federal courthouse in San Francisco in which a security officer shot a man four times.
The incident happened on January 26 at or just outside the James R. Browning Courthouse at Seventh and Mission streets, also known as the home of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. As Bay Area News Group reports, 35-year-old Zachary Norman Guyton was reportedly loitering around the steps of the courthouse in the morning hours before the courthouse opened.
The security officer is reportedly contracted through FPS or Federal Protective Services, and he and other officers had been told to conduct foot patrols and to clear trespassers from the courthouse grounds and those of the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building across the street.
The officer alleges that Guyton was wielding a knife and "advanced" toward him, and that he feared for his own life. The officer reportedly shot Guyton four times, after firing a total of seven shots.
Video of the incident appears to confirm that Guyton was walking toward the officer with a knife as the officer backed away and yelled commands.
Per the news group, Guyton will now face a federal charge of assault on a federal employee. Details of the shooting incident were not made public until earlier this week, when the criminal complaint was filed.
Another FPS officer, Dave Patrick Underwood, was fatally shot in May 2020 outside the Dellums Federal Building in Oakland, while George Floyd protests were raging on nearby Broadway in downtown Oakland. The shooting was found to be committed by two self-proclaimed "Boogaloo boys," one of whom had participated in militia trainings with others in Northern California in preparation for a hypothetical second Civil War or American Revolution — with federal officers of all stripes being targets.
The shooter, 35-year-old Steven Carrillo, was an Air Force staff sergeant, and was convicted in federal court and sentenced to 41 years in federal prison. Robert Alvin Justus Jr., the driver and accomplice in the shooting, received a life sentence in 2024. (Carrillo is concurrently serving a life sentence in state prison for the murder of Santa Cruz Sheriff's Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller, who was killed during the manhunt for Carrillo that followed the Oakland shooting.)
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