Zion Young has been in contact with the justice system since he was a juvenile. Documents obtained by The Voice of San Francisco show that in October 2016, at age 16, Young committed an armed robbery. Two years later on Oct. 7, 2018, an 18-year-old Young was arrested in Marin County for trespassing, assault with a deadly weapon, and having an active warrant for his arrest in San Francisco.
On Dec. 11, 2019, at approximately 6 p.m., officers from the San Francisco Bayview police station responded to the area of the Hunter’s Point Expressway for a report of a stolen Audi evading a San Francisco sheriff vehicle. Officers found a car matching the description at Gilman Avenue and Ingalls Street. They also observed a young man jogging in the middle of the block wearing latex gloves with a suspicious bulge in the pocket of his yellow hoodie. After a struggle, officers took 19-year-old Zion Young into custody and charged him with obstruction, receiving or concealing stolen property, addict in possession of a firearm, possession of ammunition, convicted felon in possession of a firearm, and carrying a loaded firearm in public.
On Feb. 20, 2020, San Francisco police saw a silver Toyota with no license plates parked completely on the sidewalk. They discovered Zion Young in the passenger seat next to the driver, 26-year-old Fagamalama Pasene, and a young woman in the backseat. Officers also observed a glass pipe, commonly used for smoking methamphetamine, which appeared to contain narcotics residue. The young woman, who gave her name as Jazmine, claimed the pipe was hers. The police cited Pasene for having no license plates and parking on the sidewalk. When Young refused to keep his hands on the dashboard and reached toward the floor, officers asked him to exit the vehicle. Young obliged, then took off running with an officer in pursuit. He jumped a fence near his residence on Hollister Avenue, where a witness told the officer they saw him toss a gun. Police located a loaded Arminus .38 caliber “Titan Tiger,” and eventually took Young into custody. When Jazmine was mirandized, she told officers she witnessed Young purchase the firearm two weeks prior because “he needed it for protection.” The gun was unregistered. A records check revealed Young had a prior charge for being a felon in possession of a firearm. He was booked on 11 felonies.
Following up on the case, I noticed that Young was not listed on the inmate locater for San Francisco County Jail. When I asked then-San Francisco District Attorney spokesman Alex Bastian what happened, he said then-District Attorney Chesa Boudin had reduced the 11 felonies to one misdemeanor and let Young go on an ankle monitor. Bastian said Boudin “wasn’t able to charge Young with a felony because he was a juvenile during his prior offenses,” though Bastian conceded Young likely had “serious charges as a juvenile.” In a conversation that went around in circles, Bastian kept saying Boudin charged only a misdemeanor because Young had been “a juvenile during his other arrests” and therefore was not a felon, but I pointed out that he was 18 at the time of his arrest in Marin County and had an outstanding warrant in San Francisco at the time. Also, one of the 11 charges in the Feb. 20 arrest was “convicted felon in possession of a firearm.” Bastian said he would look into it further, but several follow-up conversations went the same haphazard way, with Bastian seemingly trying to protect his boss Boudin by refusing to address the fact that Zion Young was arrested as an adult in Marin County for assault with a deadly weapon, trespassing, and having an outstanding San Francisco warrant in 2018.
Then-District Attorney Chesa Boudin reduced the 11 felonies Young was charged with to one misdemeanor and let him go on an ankle monitor.
I decided to run all of this by another source (who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak about the case) who indicated that Boudin had been unhappy with the way Young was arrested because it was a “pretextual stop” — when police detain an individual for a minor crime, like a traffic violation, because they believe the person is actually involved in or has committed another more serious crime. In the Feb. 20 case, the source said, officers approached the car because it was parked on the sidewalk and had no license plates, upon which they saw suspected drug residue on a glass pipe. That led to Young running from them, which resulted in his arrest.
On Feb. 28, 2020, just eight days after Zion Young was arrested and released, Boudin announced policies that would take effect immediately within his office. Prosecutors would no longer charge people with the possession of contraband resulting from “stop-and-frisk style pretextual searches” or make use of status-based sentencing enhancements such as prior strikes or alleged gang affiliation status, except in “extraordinary circumstances where a defendant presented grave risks to public safety or crime victims.” In those cases, he said, either he or a designee could override the policy. “Pretextual stops and sentencing enhancements based on who you know rather than what you did are relics of the tough-on-crime era that failed to make us safer,” Boudin told the press. “Instead, they led to mass incarceration, targeted innocent black and brown drivers, and increased recidivism. They stand in the way of fairness and justice.”
None of this came as a surprise to San Francisco voters. Boudin ran on a platform of buzzy “justice” terms (“racial justice,” “social justice,” “restorative justice,” “reformative justice”). It certainly sounded good. The problem was, when Boudin came into office there were no programs or policies in place to execute the buzzwords — and that brings us back to Zion Young.
The son of a working-class Chinese immigrant family, 19-year-old Kelvin Chew was enrolled at City College of San Francisco after graduating from Balboa High School, planning to study computer science and engineering at U.C. Santa Cruz in the fall. On May 7, 2020, Chew had just finished a class on Zoom and wanted to get some fresh air. He left his family’s Portola neighborhood home to take a brief walk, but when he didn’t return, his mother, Monica Chew, became worried. Using the GPS on Kelvin’s cell phone, she went searching for him. At 8 p.m. near Felton and Colby streets, Mrs. Chew saw police surrounding a young man lying on the sidewalk. His eyes were still open, and the street was covered in blood. It was Kelvin, dead from a gunshot wound.
Members of the community and evidence at the scene led police to the suspects, Fagamalama Pasene and Zion Young, who they believed killed Kelvin in a botched robbery attempt. Pasene was charged with murder, second degree robbery, and a misdemeanor enroute warrant. Young was charged with murder, second degree robbery, person prohibited from possessing firearms under the age of 30, and carrying a loaded firearm. Charging documents indicated Young was the shooter. If the name Fagamalama Pasene sounds familiar, that’s because he was in the driver’s seat when Young was arrested on those 11 felony firearms charges, just over two months prior to Chew’s murder.
Young pleaded not guilty and denied all charges. “This is a truly tragic situation for the families and communities of these young men, one of whom lost his life and two of whom now stand accused of taking it,” his public defender Sylvia Cediel said at the time.
Young’s last court date was on Dec. 24, 2024, in Department 22. The court number, 20005626, states “Jury Trial.” Court number 20002927 is for the firearms related charges that he was arrested for on Feb. 24, 2020, that were dismissed by Boudin prior to his recall. Court number 20005626 is for Young’s May 12, 2020, arrest in the murder of Kelvin Chew.
Case update: Troy McAlister
Court records show McAlister’s last court date in the murders of Hanako Abe and Elizabeth Platt as Jan. 7, 2025. The last hearing was a Brady Motion on Nov. 11, 2024, in Department 20 before Judge Brian Ferrall. A Brady Motion is a defendant’s request for the prosecution in a criminal case to turn over any potentially exculpatory evidence (which means evidence that may be favorable to the accused). Defense attorneys generally bring this motion as part of the pretrial process, or later in a case, when they believe that prosecutors are withholding such information; however, it is also a defense tactic to delay a case further (the longer a case drags on, the fewer witnesses are available and the memories of remaining witnesses fade). In McAlister’s case, it appears to be a motion of discovery on a peace officer. The order was sealed by the court.