Just before Halloween, San Francisco Muni riders were greeted by a grim specter: a dead raccoon, bleeding from its head, being swung around by a masked man as a train full of passengers looked on in horror.
The Standard can now reveal, based on video obtained through a public records request, that the man boarded at least one Muni train with the animal carcass, frightening passengers. Some quickly hopped off the train; others stayed on but dashed away.
The video provides a fuller picture of the bizarre Oct. 29 event. A man dressed in a hooded jacket, gloves, and a mask is seen standing on a platform as a train arrives. In a surreal display, he hurries across the street to retrieve a dead raccoon from the sidewalk as if it were a prized possession, then sprints back to board the rush-hour train, holding the beast.
The events unfolded on the M line in the West Portal and Saint Francis Wood sections of the city.
After picking up the raccoon by the tail, the man clambers onto the train through the center doors and drops the remains on the floor, prompting one passenger to bolt for the exit, the footage shows.
The beast handler then takes an empty seat, leading nearby riders to vacate their seats, congregating near an exit as another slides across the bench farther away from the deceased. The man sits near the carcass, gesturing while he appears to speak.
Several people disembark when the doors open, at which point the man picks up the raccoon again and deposits it on an empty seat. He then moves to another seat farther from the animal. He sits back, apparently relaxed, and crosses his legs.
Another camera shows the train operator talking briefly on a phone. It’s unclear who is contacted, but SFMTA officials confirmed that passengers were evacuated, and the train was taken out of service that morning to be cleaned.
The footage shows the raccoon man fetching his furry friend and leaving the train. Moments after he disembarks, the rest of the riders on the train begin clearing out.
Although SFMTA officials did not provide details about the footage, it appears to match a description recounted by a Lowell High School student who witnessed the event on an M train traveling toward Balboa Park.
The student, whom The Standard is not naming due to their age, said the man got off the train with the raccoon at the Saint Francis Circle stop moments before the Muni operator ordered everyone off.
But the man appears to have lugged the trash panda’s body onto at least one other M train that morning, according to another witness.
Jilliane Tayler told The Standard she saw the man riding an M train headed downtown later that morning and provided a photo of him sitting next to the animal on the floor. In her picture, the man is in a short-sleeved shirt, unlike the video footage that shows him in a jacket. The photo does not match the video footage and appears to have been taken on a different train.
“He claimed to have killed it in the park himself and made commentary about how he planned to eat it,” Tayler said by email. “It was extremely unsettling as he was swinging the body around.”
The man boarded at either the Ocean Avenue or Eucalyptus Avenue stop and got off at West Portal and 14th Avenue, she said.
“This man seemed mentally unstable and I was worried about trying to contact authorities while he was on the train as he did not seem of sound mind,” Tayler wrote.
The man was photographed by another person standing on a bench holding the raccoon by the tail at West Portal and 14th Avenue.
A representative for San Francisco Animal Care and Control told The Standard the agency had received a complaint about the raccoon and sent a worker to properly dispose of it.
“He was telling those around him that the raccoon ‘didn’t listen to him’ and that we should ‘go to school and be good’ so we didn’t end up like the raccoon,” the Lowell student said by email. “He also said, ‘I have mental issues, don’t talk to me.’”