A frightening home-invasion burglary involving a bloodied man in a hospital gown, is shedding light on a potentially bigger problem for residents in one San Francisco neighborhood, and city-wide.
It wasn’t the wind that woke Cole Valley resident Jen Brown from her slumber just after 5 a.m. Saturday.
“I confronted him right here,” says Brown, who shows the broken side door. “I said, ‘what are you doing!’ ‘Who are you?’ ‘Why are you in my house!”‘
The man then went on a rampage.
“He runs down the hall, smashes this chair against the mirror, smashing things and comes back to me where I’m standing in here,” says Brown, gesturing to her bedroom.
What the man was clad in made the already terrifying incident, feel like a horror movie.
“I see he’s wearing hospital patient clothing a nightshirt from a hospital and a medical band on his wrist. There’s blood on his face, he had a loose fitting zipped hoodie and having a psychotic episode” says Brown. .
Despite trying to de-escalate the situation, asking the man to sit down and stay calm, Brown says “he went manic, spinning around the room, looking for something.”
The man, then made a dramatic exit.
“The next thing he did was hurl this radiator through my bedroom window and… jumped out.”
As soon as the suspect hurled himself out of that third story window, rear-end first, a number of neighbors descended onto the brick walkway, trying to figure out what was going on. Some wielded baseball bats and hockey sticks as protection. One neighbor even found a severed finger in his garden.
SFPD reported they arrested 41-year-old Russell Long of Redding. He had a number of injuries and was booked at the San Francisco County Jail for charges of burglary, false imprisonment, vandalism and resisting arrest.
Jen and a number of neighbors say there have been several incidents involving individuals committing crimes wearing hospital wristbands or gowns.
When asked what she’d like the public to take away from her story, Jen says she’s sharing her experience to help the community.
“The reason I wanted to tell the story is not for the sensation and to exploit. This exposes a greater problem. The mental health homeless problem in San Francisco is real.”
Neither SFPD or a nearby hospital could elaborate where the suspect had come from. While Jen puts the pieces of the disheveled home she loves so much back together, she thanks her neighbors for their help with the aftermath and support.
“My home is my sanctuary. The community I moved in is fantastic and the neighbors are wonderful.” She hopes her story will encourage others to speak out and spark positive changes in her city.