Two men shot on SF street after hometown boomers rob foreign drug dealer, court told
Two elderly felons accused of a San Francisco street robbery, in which one shot a foreign drug dealer before being hit by return fire from the trafficker’s compañeros, will appear at the city’s Hall of Justice today for a preliminary hearing.
Prosecutors say 61-year-old Gregory McDowell and 67-year-old Larry Ardoin waylaid a victim who was standing at the intersection of Market Street and Van Ness Avenue at 2:00am on August 19.
“Just give me everything, let’s do it right here,” McDowell is said to have demanded of Jose Castro while pressing a pistol into the man’s side.
Castro surrendered cash, a phone and a “backpack” the contents of which went unremarked on by prosecutors but which may be connected to a huge quantity of fentanyl cops subsequently found.
The robbery aroused the ire of others, coincidentally also standing at the same intersection at two o’clock in the morning, who pursued the senior duo as they beat a slow retreat to Ardoin’s supportive housing unit two blocks away.
McDowell opened fire on his chasers shooting one, Carlos Velasquez-Baoegas, square in the chest before himself being struck by a shot in the leg. The pair arrived back at Ardoin’s apartment building, an outside window of which, police would later find, had been shattered by a bullet.
Police arrested the defendants after tracking them down to their hideout where McDowell was found under a bed nursing a badly-wounded leg. Nearby was a 9mm gun and 628g of fentanyl.
Velasquez-Baoegas, 26, was taken to Zuckerberg General Hospital where he was listed in critical condition. He was last arrested three months’ earlier at the same intersection for drug dealing.
The court was previously told that Ardoin’s first conviction, for assault with a deadly weapon, came in 1979 while McDowell’s was of a more recent vintage – he was convicted of theft in 1990.
“As a result of the charged felony offenses Mr McDowell’s maximum exposure in state prison is 36 years to life,” wrote assistant district attorney Phoebe Maffei in a motion to detain. “Mr Ardoin’s exposure on the charges alone is just over 11 years in state prison, however this would be at least his tenth strike conviction.”
A spokesman for SFPD Chief Paul Yep did not respond to questions about whether any of the robbed drug traffickers are being charged, nor about any plan Yep may have to end the mayhem linked to illegal alien drug dealers.
McDowell and Ardoin will appear today in Department 20 of San Francisco’s Hall of Justice for a preliminary hearing. Each has pleaded not guilty to a battery of felonies.
The case continues.
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