Bailed after bank robbery, and again after carjacking, unstable violent felon was free to ‘stab’ Muni rider
Further details are emerging in the case of Glenn Hopkins – accused of stabbing a Muni rider last week after the victim sought to protect women passengers from untoward advances.
Hopkins was on bail after being accused of a bank robbery in the city’s Potrero Hill neighborhood on the afternoon of June 29 2026. Prosecutors say he passed a note to a teller at Chase Bank on 16th Street demanding “all the money” and made a motion implying he had a gun in his waistband.
He made off with $500 and was captured by police less than an hour later in a nearby McDonald’s.
Although assistant district attorney Rebecca Warren asked the court to keep Hopkins locked up – describing him presciently as “an ongoing and substantial danger to the public” – he was released on an ankle monitor by Judge Matthew Kahn two days after his arrest. When he promptly failed to appear at his next hearing, a bench warrant was issued and he was arrested. On August 31 Judge Gregory Syren sent him on his way once more, this time without the ankle monitor.
A week after that release, on September 8, Hopkins was arrested by Sunnyvale Police. Investigators say he broke into a stationary RV and fought with the owners, tried to carjack a nearby Toyota Corolla, which resulted in the owner being injured, then stole another vehicle, a Ford Mustang, which he first drove at the owner of the RV and which he later totaled after leading police on a high-speed chase near Vallejo.
He was ultimately charged with two counts of first-degree burglary, relating to the RV, plus two counts of auto theft. Judge Nicole Isger releasing him at his first court hearing on September 10 and told him to report to pretrial services officials within two business days.
So Hopkins was on pretrial release twice by the afternoon of September 23, when prosecutors say he repeatedly stabbed a man in the neck, face and chest with a box cutter on a 14 Muni bus. The victim had come to the aid of two women riders to whom he is said to have been making untoward advances on the crowded bus.
Hopkins’ rap sheet includes convictions for unlawful sex with a minor in 2006 and assault with a deadly weapon in 2008, both in Alameda County; domestic violence in 2014 in Solano County; and vehicle theft and evading police in 2025 in Sonoma County.
At the time of the bank robbery he remained on post-release community supervision for the 2025 convictions.
This is yet another in a regular series of examples of obviously unstable violent felons allowed their freedom at the expense of ordinary San Franciscans.
Edward McQuillion, accused of a relentless run of savage attacks on women Muni riders, among them mothers with children and seniors, was released by a San Francisco judge.
Hopkins will next appear on October 8 for a preliminary hearing, at which a judge will determine whether the evidence is sufficient to send him to trial.
The case continues.
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