In the early morning hours of Nov. 23, 2025, Cassidy Wyatt Allen, a repeat violent offender and participant in San Francisco’s mental health diversion program, broke into 38-year-old Jessica Sanchez Landaverde’s residence located at 261 Granada Ave. in San Francisco’s Ingleside District. Allen, a 44-year-old transient with a criminal record spanning 25 years over multiple counties, encountered Sanchez Landaverde and a struggle ensued. The San Francisco Police Department report states that neighbors heard banging sounds coming from the dwelling starting around 6:30 a.m. but no one called 911. For hours, Allen tortured Sanchez Landaverde with his hands as well as objects utilized as weapons while she struggled for her life but ultimately died from her injuries at 3:23 p.m.
At approximately 3 p.m., another tenant arrived home and called police after unlocking the front door and hearing someone rush toward the door and lock it from the inside. When officers arrived, they found Sanchez Landaverde lying on her back at the foot of the bed soaked in a pool of her own blood. She had ligature marks on her neck and blood around her nose and mouth. There was a cord or rope fastened around her throat. Her jaw was so badly damaged that a medical examiner later concluded it had been broken. That evening, Allen was arrested just 1.5 miles from the house.
Allen’s record includes arrests for robbery, vandalism, theft, and possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia. Just over a month prior to Sanchez Landaverde’s murder, the public defender and the district attorney agreed to admit Allen to mental health diversion despite the fact he received a negative diversion report from a previous crime for failure to adhere to the program. That previous crime was the subject of part 1 of this two-part series — in an exclusive interview with the Voice, another woman named Jessica, who was also 38 years of age when Allen broke into her home, detailed the frightening events that took place at around 4 a.m. on Oct. 17, 2023. Fortunately for Jessica Condrey, neighbors did call 911 when they heard Allen break down a backyard fence. While she waited for officers to arrive, a 911 operator advised Condrey to barricade her and her young daughter in her bedroom by shoving a dresser against the door. Police found Allen in Condrey’s daughter’s room where they discovered blood and “other fluid stains” in the child’s bed.
Condrey told the Voice that after waiting all day on Nov. 1, 2023, to testify against Allen, she was sent home. “Then the district attorney’s office called and said I didn’t need to testify because he was being ‘placed in a mental health program to get the help he needs.’ … They also said the charges were being lowered to two misdemeanors and, since it wasn’t violent and he didn’t harm anyone.”
But Allen didn’t get the help he needed and, in fact, continued his criminal behavior. On July 2, 2025, he was arrested for stealing from a Walgreen’s in San Francisco. After being released on his own recognizance, Allen failed to appear for a court-ordered hearing on Aug. 6, causing Judge Brian Strech to issue a bench warrant.
The very next day, Allen battered and then robbed 79-year-old San Francisco resident Stiljan D. of his bicycle and cell phone. The victim sustained injuries including a gash on his arm. Allen also physically attacked Williams Jose Garcia Ojeda, who witnessed the theft and attempted to retrieve the victim’s property from Allen.
In an experience that mirrored Condrey’s in 2023, Garcia Ojeda waited in court several hours on Aug. 8, 2025, to testify against Allen when he was told he was free to leave. Later than afternoon, a representative from the district attorney’s office called and informed him that his testimony wouldn’t be needed because Allen was being placed in “an intensive mental health program.” That same day, despite the poor diversion report from the break-in at Condrey’s home in 2023, Allen was granted participation in a two-month misdemeanor MHD program under the supervision of SFPTD. During those two months, as with other stints in diversion, Allen repeatedly violated the rules by not attending or refusing to comply with his mental health program. He also continued committing crimes where he posed a danger to the public. Despite all of this, SFPTD failed to terminate Allen’s diversion and no criminal charges were reinstated.
As we’ve written many times before, MHD was originally intended for nonviolent offenders diagnosed with mental health issues to bypass criminal prosecution by entering supervised, community out-patient treatment for a period of up to one year for misdemeanors and up to two years for “nonviolent” felonies. Eligibility requires that defendants not pose an “unreasonable risk” of danger to public safety and participation is determined through “qualifying factors and assessments.” If a participant complies with the program’s treatment plan and avoids new violations (which, as we have exposed, happens very rarely), the criminal charges are dismissed, and the arrest record is sealed. As the Voice also exposed, San Francisco allows a large number of violent repeat felons to participate in the MHD program. For example, violent or serious felonies admitted to MHD from August of 2023 to July of 2025 included 35 arsons; 18 carjackings; 129 drug dealers; 116 assaults with great bodily injury; 84 domestic violence, child, and elder abuse; 109 robberies; 62 felon in possession of a firearm; 18 felony parole; and 10 attempted murders.
SFPTD failures led to preventable deaths of Jessica Sanchez Landaverde and Ed French
In 2003, the San Francisco Sheriff’s Office delegated MHD’s qualifications and risk assessments responsibilities to the San Francisco Pretrial Diversion Project (SFPTD), a nonprofit organization contracted through the Sheriff’s Office. This transfer effectively entrusted SFPTD with pretrial assessments and deciding eligibility for diversion programs under the oversight of the Sheriff’s Office.
In May, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Rochelle East said the court planned to end the 50-year-partnership with SFPTD later in 2026 because the nonprofit has refused to release its financial records for more than a year. East also said SFPTD has “for years turned in reports that are inaccurate, overdue, or unclear.” The court wants to transition pretrial services to the San Francisco Adult Probation Department (no hard date has been set because the move depends in part on how city budget funds are allocated).
In Allen’s case, SFPTD failed to ensure that he was “eligible and suitable” for the program. Once they approved Allen, SFPTD allowed unqualified and untrained staff to conduct inaccurate and incomplete risk assessments of Allen in 2023 and 2025, omitting the expert evaluation from a professional mental health expert required for MHD participation. SFPTD also failed to provide the court with Allen’s complete criminal history, mental health status, penchant for committing violent crimes against strangers, and prior pattern of entering occupied dwellings.
It was given to San Francisco for free, but with conditions that prohibit the disclosure of ‘any information about the use of the Tool, including any information about the development, operation and presentation of the Tool.’
SFPTD blundered again by failing to validate the “pretrial assessment tool” with the California Judicial Council at least once every three years as required. Additionally, the organization didn’t ensure its employees, agents, consultants, and other contracted nonprofits were qualified, adequately trained, and properly supervised to use and to authenticate results from PSAs and other pretrial risk tools.
Tragically, Sanchez Landaverde’s death isn’t the only high-profile case where the controversial pretrial assessment tool contributed to a preventable murder. In the early morning hours of July 16, 2017, a 71-year-old photographer named Ed French went to Twin Peaks. While photographing the sunrise, French was approached by a young man and a young woman and robbed of his camera at gunpoint. In video later obtained by SFPD, the woman is seen shooting French even though the man, who is holding French, had already stolen the camera. Afterward the two flee, but the man returns to grab the camera bag and is seen kicking French as he lies dying on the ground. A passing jogger called 911 and administered CPR to French until SFPD arrived on scene. French was transported to a local hospital where he succumbed to his injuries.
On July 28 at approximately 10:19 a.m., an armed robbery took place at St. Mary’s Cathedral Square at Geary Boulevard and Gough Street where two victims were robbed of their camera and wallet at gunpoint. Investigators were able to identify the suspects and determine they were the suspects in the Ed French murder.
Fantasy Decuir, 20, of San Francisco was charged with robbery and conspiracy. Lamonte Mims, 19, of Patterson, was charged with robbery, conspiracy, being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm, carrying a concealed weapon in a vehicle, and committing an offense while out on bail or while released on his own recognizance from a prior offense. After the video of the crime surfaced, Decuir was charged with homicide, robbery, and use of a firearm in commission of a crime. Mims was booked for homicide, robbery, being a principal of a crime, and using a firearm in the commission of a felony.
Court records reveal that Mims was arrested while sitting in a vehicle in San Francisco’s Bayview District around 2:30 a.m. on July 4, 2017, for possessing a 9 mm Ruger and a .38 special handgun. Just five days before the Ed French murder, Mims appeared in a San Francisco courtroom before Judge Sharon Reardon, where the Pretrial Diversion Project Public Safety Assessment Tool gave Mims a faulty risk score that understated the danger he posed to the public. The system, created by the foundation of billionaire and former Enron energy trader John Arnold to calculate whether a suspect is a flight risk or likely to return to court, was given to San Francisco free of charge, but with conditions that prohibit the disclosure of “any information about the use of the Tool, including any information about the development, operation and presentation of the Tool.”
Mims was already on felony probation after an arrest for breaking into cars at Twin Peaks. He did three months in jail and was given a stay-away order for the popular tourist destination. He also did jail time in San Mateo, but because the dozens of other counties using the “free” tool didn’t have the ability to talk to each other, it wasn’t figured into the score.
“The judge actually said, ‘Yes, he is dangerous. He was in a car in San Francisco, where he doesn’t live, at 2 in the morning with guns,’” said Brian Higginbotham, who had known Ed for three decades and was his partner for more than 10 years. Even though Reardon wasn’t bound by the PSA score, she released Mims with “assertive case management” to a SFPTD program. Mims, like Allen, didn’t adhere to the program and, in a hauntingly similar case to Sanchez Landaverde’s, was free to commit a preventable murder.
In December 2024, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins announced that Decuir and Mims received life without the possibility of parole for French’s killing. When I interviewed French’s sister Lorrie about San Francisco’s “restorative justice” model, she said, “Restorative justice? If they can restore my brother, that would be justice. Restore what? Restore them back to the streets to do this to others?”
It took a murder to keep Allen behind bars, too, but under San Francisco’s broken pretrial diversion programs, he won’t be the last.
