On-probation felon accused of shooting dead ‘love rival’ on SOMA street has 18-page rap sheet of violence and mayhem
Further details are emerging in the case of Siaosi Aleamotua – accused of murder after a fatal shooting in San Francisco’s SOMA district in the early hours of March 4.
The victim, Carl Edward Jones Jr., was struck in the head and chest and declared dead in the emergency room of San Francisco General Hospital at 2:10am.
Witnesses told police that the victim and suspect knew each other and that the victim had become embroiled with the attacker’s girlfriend.
The suspect used an assault rifle in the attack, they said.
Investigators quickly honed in on Aleamotua, with court records showing they pulled his rap sheet within five hours of the killing and arrested him three hours after that.
Another man, Jesse Aldan, is in custody accused of taking the gun and selling it.
Two SFPD officers, a block away at the time of the attack, heard the shots and responded immediately to 125 6th Street – a Mercy Housing-run single-room occupancy hotel for the homeless.
There they saw Jones’ prone body on the sidewalk.
Witnesses and security camera footage from the Mid-Market Community Benefit District indicated to police that the suspect had been wearing a red Washington Nationals jacket and a red hat.
These were later found stuffed behind an electrical box a block away.
Cops tracked Aleamotua to the Helen Hotel at 166 Turk Street which covert surveillance officers saw him leave just after 9:00am to get in to an Uber. He was captured at gunpoint as he got out of the car at 8th and Mission Streets.
The suspect was also seen discarding a backpack during his flight outside the Auburn Hotel on Minna Street. Video showed a hotel resident promptly steal the backpack and take it to the hotel. Later that afternoon in an interview with police, he admitted there was a gun in the bag and that he had sold it.
Aleamotua, 33, has a breathtaking criminal history that has to be seen to be believed. But his presence in San Francisco, a city with which he has only a tenuous link, appears due to the determination of a federal judge and probation officials.
His most recent string of convictions began in August 2018 when he was found with a loaded .38 caliber revolver, stolen from his adoptive parents in Louisiana, as he got off a Greyhound bus in Oakland.
Four months later, while in custody, he violently beat two Alameda County sheriff’s deputies, leaving one with a fractured eye socket and the other with a concussion.
After serving a 60-month federal sentence, his case was transferred to the Western District of Louisiana, where his probation supervision began in April 2023. He then stole another gun from his family in Louisiana, which bizarrely led to him being hauled back to California where he spent four months in prison before being released to a ‘TRP Academy’ residential program in San Francisco.
On November 6 2024, one day after his release from the residential program, he fled from an SFPD traffic stop, then abandoned the car, then ditched a Polymer 80 ghost gun in a planter box. He then attempted to shoulder check an officer who was trying to place him into a police wagon.
He served six months in county jail for those antics, followed by three months in federal custody before he was sent back to the same residential program that manifestly failed to work last time.
Court records suggest U.S. District Judge James Donato did not take up the suggestion from Aleamotua’s own attorney that, if he wished to closely monitor her client’s progress, he could keep the probation case open and hold regular court hearings with him present at San Francisco federal courthouse.
Aleamotua was instead sent back in August 2025 for another stint at TRP Academy – an outfit which describes itself as a “culturally responsive, peer-led, abstinence-based, reentry therapeutic teaching community and transitional housing program” – which is associated with a constellation of other groups such as Postive Directions Equals Change Inc., the No Violence Alliance and Westside Health.
Aleamotua, who has pleaded not guilty to murder and firearms offenses, will next appear at San Francisco’s Hall of Justice on April 13 to set a date for his preliminary hearing.
The case continues.
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