A man was rushed to San Francisco General Hospital after being punched in the head in a random attack at around 6 p.m. Sunday in the Castro.
The man was bleeding profusely and had suffered a seizure, according to fire officials and a witness.
Castro resident Patrick McCabe said he saw the attack while driving and immediately called police. He followed the assailant for about 15 minutes before officers arrived and made an arrest.
Police confirmed the unprovoked assault and said they arrested Andrew Davais, 34, without incident. Davais, who has 18 listed criminal court cases in San Francisco, was booked into jail for aggravated assault, probation violation, and parole violation. He was last booked into jail in October 2023 for criminal threats and assault with a deadly weapon other than a firearm.
Moments after the assault, Davais stopped to talk to a bouncer outside the Moby Dick bar on 18th Street.
“I had some bunny ears on, and I also had a bubble gun,” the bouncer, Alan Alvarez, recalled. “He comes up to me and he’s like, ‘Don’t be saying what you said.’ He was just talking gibberish to me.
“He’s like, ‘You’re lucky I don’t knock you out, because I just knocked some other guy out,'” Alvarez continued. “I told him to keep walking.”
He added that Davais appeared to be intoxicated.
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“His eyes were red, and he looked homeless. He had a skateboard and a bunch of trash bags,” Alvarez said.
The victim remains unidentified, and his status is unknown.
Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who represents the Castro, said in a statement that the attack was “alarming and infuriating.”
“Everyone, resident or tourist, should feel safe in the Castro,” Mandelman said. “The news that the suspect had 18 prior criminal cases confirms people’s worst suspicion that San Francisco and California are failing to do what we need to do to keep our neighborhoods safe and dangerous people off our streets.”
There have been at least two other random assaults on pedestrians reported in the Castro over the last year.
A man named Tony was brutally beaten March 9 outside the Castro Theatre, according to his GoFundMe page. The suspect in that case, Victor Barrios, was arraigned April 3, according to court records.
In July, notorious violent offender Zero Triball threatened to burn a tourist with a blowtorch (only to be beaten up by nudists). Since 2020, Triball has threatened to burn down a community center and hogtie its owner, punched a man in the back of the head, broken another man’s nose, and hit a person with a rock, according to records.