San Francisco Police to Investigate Fatal SoMa Hit-and-Run as a Murder

A fatal hit-and-run in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood on Monday is being investigated as a homicide, according to police.

Valentino Amil, 30, was arrested on suspicion of murder after he allegedly struck a pedestrian with his car on Mission Street and South Van Ness Avenue on Monday afternoon.

San Francisco police said they responded just after 3:20 p.m. Monday, when first responders pronounced the victim dead on the scene. Officers identified the vehicle, located it on the freeway and arrested the driver on murder and felony hit-and-run charges. He is currently being held in San Francisco County Jail without bail.

Video footage obtained by the San Francisco Standard shows a black Mercedes sedan beginning to pull out of the Tower Car Wash parking lot onto Mission Street when a person approaches the front of the car.

The pedestrian stops briefly at the driver’s side window before moving in front of the vehicle. The video does not contain audio, and it’s unclear if the driver and pedestrian exchanged words.

As the person slowly walks in front of the sedan, the driver pauses, then accelerates onto Mission Street, knocking the pedestrian onto the hood of the car. The person appears to slide off to the front right side of the vehicle, which continues driving ahead, crushing the pedestrian under the car’s wheels before leaving them in the road and fleeing.

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner identified the victim on Tuesday as Dannielle Spillman, 74.

According to Seth Morris, Amil’s defense attorney, he was departing with his wife and two children, aged 11 and four months, for a trip to Disneyland at the time of the incident. They had stopped to fill up on gas.

Morris said while at the car wash, an individual, “appearing homeless, intoxicated and belligerent,” aggressively approached the vehicle. He said that witnesses indicated the person pulled on the vehicle’s doors, climbed on the hood and appeared to douse the car with a liquid, which Amil feared was gasoline.

“At that moment, [Amil] believed his family was about to be violently attacked,” Morris said in a statement. “He acted out of instinct and fear, trying to remove his children from what he perceived to be an immediate and life-threatening situation.”

It’s unclear from the video footage whether the victim grabbed the car or poured a liquid on it. The police department has not provided any further details about what led to the incident, but said an investigation led by the homicide detail is ongoing.

The San Francisco District Attorney’s Office did not respond to questions about whether it would charge Amil in connection with the case.

The death marks San Francisco’s eighth pedestrian fatality so far this year. The intersection of Mission Street and South Van Ness is along San Francisco’s High Injury Network, the 13% of streets where more than 75% of fatal and severe injury collisions occur. SoMa is a hotspot, according to pedestrian advocacy group WalkSF, because the streets are designed for industrial uses and have a high volume of vehicle traffic. It’s also one of the neighborhoods with the largest unhoused populations.

“This neighborhood and everyone who lives there deserves more solutions to keep them safe,” said Jodie Medeiros, the executive director of WalkSF. The hit-and-run marks the eighth pedestrian fatality so far this year.