Neighborhood had calmed down before fatal shooting
By: Tamara Barak Aparton
Examiner Staff Writer
February 9, 2009
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| Targeted: The area in the Western Addition where Myron Edward was shot to death Saturday morning is within the area covered by The City’s gang injunction. (Cindy Chew/The Examiner) |
SAN FRANCISCO — Western Addition residents remained on edge Sunday after a 40-year-old man was killed by a hail of bullets just steps from his public-housing residence.
Police were two blocks away when gunshots rang out at 3 p.m. Saturday, San Francisco police Sgt. Lyn Tomioka said. Responding officers found the victim, Myron Edward, laying wounded in the intersection of Eddy and Laguna streets. He was taken to San Francisco General Hospital, where he died.
Edward’s neighbor, who declined to be identified, said she ran outside to find her child when she heard the gunshots. Instead, she found Edward bleeding from his side and arm, and a passer-by screaming for someone to call the police. She did not see the shooting.
“I stood over him thinking, ‘Oh, my God,’” she said. “He was conscious, but he wasn’t speaking. He had his hands clutched together, then all of a sudden he released his grip and I knew something was really wrong.”
Police arrived, but the few minutes it took paramedics to respond felt like an eternity, she said. The woman described Edward as an easygoing, helpful neighbor.
“He was a cool, funny guy. I don’t understand why it happened,” she said.
Despite occurring during daylight hours, no witnesses have come forward, Tomioka said. It marks The City’s sixth homicide this year.
The corner where Edward was shot is inside a section of an area on The City’s gang injunction. It is also part of the Police Department’s zone strategy, in which patrols are stepped up in the most violent neighborhoods.
The gang injunction targeted the Western Addition’s 20 most problematic gang members. A year later, two-thirds of the gang members targeted had not had contact with police in San Francisco, said Matt Dorsey, spokesman for City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who headed up the injunction. However, Dorsey stressed that the injunction is narrowly targeted at gang members and cannot stem all neighborhood violence.
Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi said the zone strategy had been paying off in the area, but police presence had recently ebbed.
“This particular corner is extremely notorious for violence,” he said. “Eighteen months ago, it dropped off and remained that way until this homicide. There’s a nexus between community policing practice and the reduction of violence. This goes to show you can’t really let up.”
Resident in the public-housing complex where Edward lived felt somewhat safer with the additional patrols, said one of his neighbors.
“When the officers are sitting there, it’s quiet,” the neighbor said. “I feel comfortable coming out of my house or coming home late. But as soon as they’re gone, you hear gunshots again.”
Homicides in 2009
6 S.F. homicides to date
14 Homicides by same date last year
Killings by neighborhood
1 Inner Richmond
1 Excelsior
1 Bayview-Hunters Point
2 Western Addition
1 Tenderloin
