One-man crime wave, accused of packing gun at troubled SF venue, sees state charges vanish as federal authorities swoop

September 3, 2026

A career felon saw state gun charges against him dropped at San Francisco’s Hall of Justice today, after prosecutors told a judge the case was being handed off to federal authorities.

Josef Atchan, 29, was arrested inside Mayes Oyster House on Polk Street on June 30 by SFPD’s gang task force, and officers found a gun fitted with an extended magazine on the floor nearby. Police say it was his, though his defense attorney says it could have belonged to any other patron.

The arrest appeared to be prompted by probation officials’ concerns over Atchan’s conduct.

Atchan has already done time on a gun charge. He was sentenced to 31 months in 2023 for illegal firearm possession, including assault weapons, and received a three-and-a-half-month sentence in 2025 for a hit-and-run auto-burglary spree that violated his supervised release term.

That slap on the wrist came from the same judge who’d voiced doubts about going easy on Atchan once already – U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria, who at Atchan’s original 2023 sentencing on the gun conviction told the courtroom he doubted a 31-month term was tough enough given Atchan’s history, before signing off on it anyway.

In 2025, weighing the auto-burglary spree, Chhabria said much the same thing again, then handed down the three-and-a-half-month term, ordering Atchan onto an ankle monitor and into a residential treatment program and warning him that cutting it off would bring “a very different” result. San Francisco prosecutors had said at the time they’d seek a matching time-served sentence on Atchan’s related state charges, a case they’d billed as the city’s first prosecution under SB 905, the law that dropped the requirement to prove a car was locked to charge auto burglary.

This time around, Atchan faced five firearms-related counts arising from the arrest, including felon in possession of a firearm and unlawfully carrying a loaded gun as a prohibited person. The gun was recovered several feet from where officers cuffed him at the restaurant that was crowded with several dozen other diners at the time. A pat-down of Atchan turned up nothing and a later search of his home also came back empty.

Investigators did flag two photos from Atchan’s Instagram showing firearms, which they said resembled the gun recovered at the scene.

Deputy Public Defender Danielle Craig accused the District Attorney’s office of stonewalling on discovery, filing a motion in mid-July demanding prosecutors turn over every warrant behind the case, including, she added, whatever authorized officers to track Atchan electronically before moving in on the restaurant.

Today in Department 18 of the Hall of Justice, Judge Brian Stretch dismissed the state charges after learning from prosecutors that the U.S. Attorney’s office had elected to take over the case.

That move to federal court leaves those discovery fights behind, at least for now, in state court.

Third strike for troubled venue

Atchan’s bust adds to a brutal run for Mayes Oyster House this summer. Two weeks later, a man was shot amid a mass brawl outside the restaurant. Weeks earlier, in June, a man was set upon by eight attackers outside the same venue. Two accused Norteño gang members, Herlin Arteaga-Cruz, 22, and Adrian Velasquez, 21, remain jailed on charges including robbery.