On July 22, 2026, after randomly attacking and nearly killing a senior man and a senior woman three years apart, repeat violent predator Zavein Blue Wright was found mentally fit to stand trial in San Francisco Superior Court. On Aug. 10, the Public Defender’s office filed a motion on Wright’s behalf to refer him to mental health diversion again, along with a protective order sealing the defense motion in support of the updated petition. Under Penal Code sections 1001.35 and 1001.36, the defendant must not pose an unreasonable risk of danger to public safety if treated in the community, which Wright clearly does.
Public records list an address for Wright in Bakersfield, Calif., from Oct. 6, 2020, to Jan 31, 2024, but he has been a fixture in the Marina for most of that time, where he is known by residents for his erratic and threatening behavior and for following young females. One person described seeing Wright trap two young girls in the doorway of a building, refusing to let them go until the person shouted at him and called police. Between 2019 and 2023, Wright, 32, was arrested in San Francisco 11 times for crimes including kidnapping, peeking and prowling while loitering on private property, attempted burglary, grand theft, vandalism over $5,000, assault, trespassing, contempt of court, disorderly conduct, false imprisonment by violence, unauthorized entry of a dwelling, and threats of violence. Wright was arrested for assault likely to cause bodily injury on May 23, 2018, in Marin County, and for the same offense four times in San Francisco on Oct. 14, 2020; Nov. 8, 2020; Oct. 23, 2022; and Aug. 9, 2023. He was also arrested four times in San Francisco for false imprisonment by violence on Oct. 14, 2020; Nov. 8, 2020; Sept. 9, 2020; and Oct. 23, 2022.
2023 attack on 80-year-old man
On Oct. 5, 2023, at approximately 7:45 a.m., 80-year-old Ken Majer was walking his little dog, Daisy, at the corner of Baker and Bay streets across from the Palace of Fine Arts when he was confronted by a large Black male. Ken says he didn’t know the person and only saw his face briefly before the man forcefully knocked him to the sidewalk. Ken’s head hit the sidewalk, and as he lay there stunned, he noticed neighbors gathering around him. One woman was calling 911 while several others helped him sit up, noting that he was bleeding profusely from the back of his head. Officers from the San Francisco Police Department and an ambulance soon arrived, and Ken was taken to the emergency room at Saint Francis Hospital. He received a CAT scan to determine his injuries, and he required 17 staples to close the wound in his head.
The presiding judge in Wright’s case, Charles Crompton, is known among critics for his leniency and presided over the infamous Patrick Thompson case. For the court hearing held on Jan. 13, 2025, Ken wrote a victim impact statement. Oscar Gonzalez, a victim advocate for elder abuse in the Victim Services Division of the District Attorney’s Office, later updated Ken on the decision by Judge Crompton. “There is no disposition in this case, rather a Mental Health Ruling. Criminal proceedings have been suspended, not terminated,” Gonzalez said in an email.
Judge Harry Jacobs was sitting in for Crompton at the Feb. 19 hearing. Wright was in the courtroom, and Ken appeared on Zoom. When asked if he wanted to make a statement, Ken pointed to Wright’s long, violent record, making him a clear danger to the community. The public defender recommended 90 days at Baker Street House, a residential treatment facility “dedicated to providing comprehensive mental health and substance use disorder treatment services.”
A Feb. 20 phone call with Gonzalez left Ken feeling even more uneasy as the onus for safety was squarely on the victim. “Do you have a safety plan?” Gonzalez asked. “This will be ongoing — do you want a therapist to talk to? Do you have cameras in and around your home? Are you comfortable calling 911? Do you know where the nearest police station is? Do you carry pepper spray or mace?”
A week after Wright was sent to Baker Street House, several Marina residents saw him wandering the neighborhood.
2026 attack on 93-year-old woman
On May 24, 2026, at 8:30 a.m., a 93-year-old woman was walking her little dog, Princess, on Cayuga Avenue in San Francisco’s Mission Terrace neighborhood when she felt something hit her incredibly hard on the back of the head. Her fall was broken by a parked car, but when she looked up, she saw a large Black man walking away. The woman’s daughter, Janet Avila, says had her mother not fallen on the car, her head would have hit the concrete pavement. “A neighbor called 911 and an ambulance took her to San Francisco General Hospital,” Avila says. “She has a fractured clavicle, stitches on her knee, and a bump on her head. If that car didn’t break her fall, it would have been much worse.”
Avila, who works for the City and County of San Francisco’s behavioral health department, thought it was a random attack, and that she may never know who harmed her elderly mother. Then one day Avila’s cousin was watching her mom and saw a man walking by who fit the description both her mother and a neighbor had described. Avila’s cousin took a video and sent it to the neighbor, who confirmed it was the same man. Another neighbor also recognized the man as someone who lived nearby at 252 Tingley Street. Avila sent the video and the address to the police sergeant on the case. “He said, ‘O.K., but we can’t go in the house. If you see him on the street, call us.’ So, I waited three hours in my car until he came out of the house. I called 911, gave them the case number, and said I was following him. The dispatcher told me to put my emergency flashers on, and the police came and picked him up.”
On May 28, the attacker, Zavein Blue Wright, was arrested and charged with battery with serious bodily injury, elder abuse, and grand theft. Avila’s mother received a subpoena in the mail for a court hearing on June 10, but when Avila called her mother’s victim advocate, Clara Nowinski, at the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, she was told there was no need for her mother to come to court because they would be “determining Wright’s competency.” Avila found all of this unsettling. “Is he going to be released near my mom again?” she asked rhetorically. “I know he’s not going to do hard time. I work in mental health here and this is never going to change.”
When she searched the Internet for the unusual name of her mother’s attacker, Avila was even more alarmed. “Your article in the Voice of San Francisco came up, and I couldn’t believe what I read.”
The next hearing for Wright is scheduled for September 2026.
