Felon to appear in court over San Francisco street shooting – after it took two Washington arrests to get him back to California
A felon accused of shooting a man in the stomach on a San Francisco street will appear in court today – almost six months after the attack, and after it took two arrests in Washington state to get him back to California.
Prosecutors say Lafonso Luke Brown, 37, approached the victim and his friends outside 765 O’Farrell Street in the Tenderloin shortly after 4:00am on March 4, pointed a pistol at them and pulled the trigger.
After the gun did not fire, Brown racked the slide and tried again, this time hitting the victim in the abdomen.
The wounded man, who had come home from work two hours earlier and was standing outside his building with friends, was taken to San Francisco General Hospital in critical condition and required surgery.
Interviewed in the intensive care unit five days later, he told investigators he did not think his attacker had targeted him and had no idea why he opened fire.
Officers recovered a spent 9mm shell casing.
SFPD Sergeant Kevin Byrne said in an arrest warrant affidavit that video showed the gunman arriving on O’Farrell Street at 3:42am and sitting in a bus stop for a quarter of an hour, then wandering the block picking items off the ground and mixing with a group on the north sidewalk.
At 4:00am he walked back to 765 O’Farrell and raised his hands into a shooting position, Byrne said. The victim then fell to the pavement.
The gunman then fled. Officers later tracked him across Tenderloin business district cameras to 685 Ellis Street – a housing complex run by Five Keys – and, once a search warrant produced the building’s own footage and its resident list, to a room where Brown was listed as staying.
Two other sergeants agreed the man in the video was Brown.
Judge Ethan Schulman signed a no-bail arrest warrant on April 7.
But Brown had not hung around. He was picked up by police in Everett, north of Seattle, on May 15 for trespass, drug possession and resisting arrest, and booked into the Snohomish County jail as a fugitive with an open warrant.
Despite the warrant, he was subsequently released by court order on July 17. He spent nine days at liberty before being arrested again on July 27, once more on drug and trespass charges.
This time he was kept in custody until being handed over to San Francisco authorities on August 17.
It is unclear where the extradition breakdown occurred. Last week it emerged that SFPD’s failure to secure a warrant for Ilex Velasquez resulted in missed chances to bring him back to San Francisco and him remaining free to commit armed crimes throughout the region.
In 2014 Brown pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy to commit robbery and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence and was sentenced to 111 months’ imprisonment. He would serve 73 months after the firearm charge was vacated following changes in the law.
A post-conviction risk assessment conducted in 2021 by federal probation officials indicated that Brown posed a “high risk” of reoffending.
His record also includes felony convictions in Solano County for vehicle theft in 2008 and receiving stolen property in 2009, plus misdemeanors for burglary, theft and receiving stolen property.
“Defendant shot the victim in public, and the victim sustained a serious gunshot wound requiring surgery,” wrote assistant district attorney Rebecca Warren in a motion to detain. “The defendant’s conduct was violent and detention is warranted to protect public safety.”
Brown earlier pleaded not guilty to felony assault with a semi-automatic firearm and various gun possession charges. He will appear this morning at San Francisco’s Hall of Justice for a preliminary hearing – at which a judge will determine whether the evidence is sufficient to send Brown to trial.
He remains in custody.
The case continues.
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