Armed robber on mental health diversion accused of opening fire with machine gun in San Francisco
A felon with a “staggering history of armed robbery,” accused of opening fire with a machine gun on a San Francisco street while on mental health diversion for another armed robbery, will make an audacious bid for bail in federal court next week.
Prosecutors say Mario Robinson, 34, shot at a group of people standing in front of a convenience store in the small hours of February 25 2026 at the intersection of Turk and Taylor Streets. The shooter fired from beside a wheelchair-bound man and appeared to lose control of the firearm.
SFPD officers, who were on the scene practically instantaneously, chased Robinson and arrested him in a nearby parking lot. A witness told police the suspect had thrown the gun under a car, where a .40 caliber Glock 22, equipped with a switch enabling automatic fire, was found.
Investigators say his DNA was subsequently found on the weapon.
Robinson was on the streets having been bailed by an Alameda County judge after using what turned out to be a replica assault rifle to stick up a CVS pharmacy in Pleasanton in July 2024.
The cashier begged the gunman not to hurt her. Less than three weeks after being arrested he was released on his own recognizance by Judge Elena Condes. Another judge, Sharon Djemal, granted him mental health diversion over prosecutors’ repeated objections that he was dangerous.
Remarkably, after his arrest in San Francisco, another Alameda judge, Elisa Della-Piana, ordered that he be made available for assessment by another ‘diversion’ program.
Prior to becoming judges Condes was a defense attorney, Djemal a former ‘Soros justice fellow,’ and Della-Piana a civil rights attorney.
Robinson is perhaps best known for a series of holdups of 7-11 stores across San Francisco in 2018 in which he pointed a gun at cashiers and threatened to kill them if they did not give him money.
He was sentenced to five years in state prison.
In 2017 he took part in a robbery of a Sacramento store in which he wore a ski mask as he pointed a gun at a clerk.
“Robinson has time and again proven himself to be unrepentant and an acute danger to both those he targets and those who happen to be near him on the street,” wrote assistant U.S. attorney Eli Cohen in a detention motion filed ahead of a hearing next Tuesday.
“Criminal justice systems in multiple states have shown him leniency: through a suspended sentence, parole and diversion; he has repeatedly squandered those opportunities by violating conditions and committing further crimes.”
“There is absolutely no reason to believe that would change now, and it is incumbent upon the court to protect the people of this district from the extreme danger he poses.”
Cohen told the court that Robinson was born in Berkeley CA before moving to Louisiana and quickly racking up convictions for robbery, theft and battery there.
The defendant had since amassed “a staggering history of armed robbery,” he said.
Robinson will appear before U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Hixson on May 18 for a detention hearing. He has not yet entered a plea to charges of robbery, machine gun possession and being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition.
The case continues.
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