Shocking twist: San Francisco beating victim now accused of vigilante attacks on homeless

A homeless man was arrested earlier this month in connection with the brutal beating of a former San Francisco fire commissioner, but the circumstances surrounding the assault have gotten more complicated, the independent news outlet Mission Local reports.

Garrett Allen Doty, 24, is accused of assaulting former fire commissioner Don Carmignani with a crowbar in an April 5 attack that left Carmignani hospitalized with severe head injuries.

Doty was charged with assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated battery with serious bodily injury and assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury in connection with the attack.

But a public defender representing Doty claims Carmignani may have been behind a series of vigilante attacks on homeless people in the same San Francisco neighborhood in which he was badly beaten, Mission Local’s Christina A. Macintosh reports.

IN OTHER NEWS: Law school professor unaware of any judge in history issuing the kind of warning that Trump got today

There were eight pepper-spray attacks on homeless people in San Francisco’s Marina District from November 2021 through January 2023 that the public defender suspects Carmignani may have been responsible for, according to the report. The series of attacks was first published by Mission Local.

Carmignani’s attorney denied his client was behind the vigilante attacks.

Doty’s attorney, Kleigh Hathaway, said one of the attacks occurred on the same street at which Carmignani lives, and that video shows a homeless person asleep when the vigilante attack them “focusing on the victim’s face for at least a few seconds.”

The attacks involved a 10-inch can of bear spray, according to police.

Hathaway wants the video to be released to the public.

A witness to the attack alleged that Carmignani told Doty “I’m going to stab you,” “I’m going to kill you,” and “Get out of here.”

If Hathaway’s assertion can be proven, the case would be the second in recent weeks in which a prevailing narrative about a San Francisco street crime that made national headlines was turned on its head.

The April 4 killing of tech entrepreneur Bob Lee was initially portrayed in national media as an example of rising lawlessness in progressive communities before police arrested Nima Momeni, a Lee acquaintance, in connection with Lee’s killing.