San Francisco pedestrian’s hit-and-run death investigated as a homicide

A collision that killed a pedestrian in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood is being investigated as a homicide, police said.

The crash was reported around 3:23 p.m. Monday, April 13, in front of a gas station at Mission Street and Van Ness Avenue. A person described as elderly was dead; the car had left the scene, the police said.

The suspect vehicle was stopped by San Francisco sheriff’s deputies near Potrero Avenue and 18th Street, about a mile from the crash site, the police said. The driver, a 30-year-old San Francisco man, was arrested on suspicion of homicide and felony hit-and-run with injury.

The San Francisco Standard obtained video that shows the pedestrian stepping into the street to go around a Mercedes-Benz sedan that is blocking the sidewalk at the gas station’s driveway. As the pedestrian passes in front of the car, the driver accelerates. The pedestrian is thrown onto the hood, then falls under the wheels and is dragged for several feet.

The suspect’s attorney told the Standard that his client, whose wife and two children were in the car, “believed his family was about to be violently attacked” and said that witness accounts corroborated the driver’s claim that someone had “aggressively” approached the car.

The pedestrian was identified by the medical examiner as Dannielle Spillman, 74.