When two BART cops stopped a 26-year-old Sunday after he tried to slip through an emergency exit, they had no idea they had nabbed a man wanted for a far graver crime.
The masked man attempted to run, but officers caught him after a few fleeting steps, according to the BART Police Department. He was carrying a gun, the agency said.
“This started as a fare evasion, but within seconds, they realized this subject had a firearm on them, and that completely changed the game,” said BART Police Deputy Chief Gina Galetti.
The stakes got even higher after that.
The suspect, who has not been named, was detained at 6:49 p.m. at West Oakland station. Twenty-two minutes earlier, the San Francisco Police Department had reported a shooter in the Tenderloin. A San Francisco Fire Department spokesperson said paramedics who responded around 6:30 p.m. found a person with at least one gunshot wound. BART cops realized the fare dodger matched the description of the gunman and turned him over to the SFPD. Police declined to share details about the arrest, citing an active investigation.
The victim of the shooting was in critical condition on Tuesday evening, according to officials.
Galetti said her department believes prosecutors should charge the man with being a felon in possession of a firearm, being a felon in possession of ammunition, carrying a firearm while masked, and resisting arrest. Authorities in San Francisco are expected to announce separate charges.
It’s not the first time a fare check has led to an arrest for a more serious crime.
In December, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins charged Martinez Guillory, 51, with felony gun and drug-dealing charges after he was caught with a semi-automatic Glock handgun, 105 grams of suspected heroin, 40 grams of cocaine, 59 grams of cocaine base, packaging material, and a digital scale in his backpack, according to prosecutors.
Guillory was arrested after piggybacking behind another passenger through the fare gates at the Civic Center station. It was the first time San Francisco’s DA charged a suspect under Proposition 36, which toughened penalties for minor property and drug offenses. The law had been in effect for only two days.
In November, BART police arrested Johnathan Wright for alleged fare evasion at San Leandro’s Bay Fair station before he was identified as the suspect in a deadly stabbing in the Financial District earlier that month.
Cracking down on freeloaders became a BART priority as the cash-strapped agency sought ways to boost its bottom line and restore public confidence in the system’s safety.
According to their most recent data, BART police issued 169 citations for fare evasions in July, down from 326 in July 2024. Galetti attributed that decrease to the success of the new gates at BART entrances, which are tougher for scofflaws to circumvent but came at a cost of $90 million. The new barriers should be installed throughout BART’s network by the end of the year.
“The goal and message is that we want our passengers to feel safe and be comfortable,” said Galetti. “When we observe someone fare-evading, we make a stop.”