The case of Eric Antonio Uc-Cahun, now 19, a native of Mexico, is the second in which a youthful offender protected from deportation in San Francisco has later been arrested for a violent crime as an adult.
The San Mateo County stabbing was especially vicious, authorities said - a top prosecutor said the victim had been "gutted, like you gut a pig."
Uc-Cahun's history of youth offenses in the city was similar to that of Edwin Ramos, a 21-year-old Salvadoran native facing triple-murder charges in connection with the slayings in June of a San Francisco man and two of his sons on an Excelsior district street.
"How many of these people are there who were the beneficiaries of this process?" asked Joseph Russoniello, the U.S. attorney for Northern California, who has been critical of the city's practice of shielding immigrants from deportation.
"This is what happens when the best intentions are misapplied," Russoniello said. "If there was any justification for this program, cases like this certainly undermine that expectation."
Both Uc-Cahun and Ramos were in San Francisco's juvenile justice system at least twice during Mayor Gavin Newsom's time in office, Ramos for an assault and an attempted robbery he committed when he was 17, Uc-Cahun in connection with assaults and other crimes for which he was arrested in 2006.
Juvenile justice officials protected both Ramos and Uc-Cahun from federal authorities under their interpretation of San Francisco's sanctuary law, which bars the city from cooperating in U.S. efforts to hunt down illegal immigrants.
However, City Attorney Dennis Herrera's office concluded last month that nothing in the law prevented San Francisco from turning over suspected youth felons to federal immigration authorities. Newsom has since ordered juvenile justice officials to provide information on felons suspected of being illegal immigrants to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
Since the policy change, more than 50 juvenile offenders have been referred to federal immigration officials, according to juvenile probation authorities.
No more, spokesman hopes
Nathan Ballard, a spokesman for the mayor, said Wednesday that he could not comment about any juvenile records. However, he said, "because of the mayor's change of policy, we are optimistic that tragedies like this one can be avoided in future."
Uc-Cahun's attorney in his adult case, Chris Morales, said his client left his parents in Mexico and came to the United States to live with siblings about four years ago.
Morales would not comment on whether Uc-Cahun was in this country legally, but federal authorities have placed an immigration hold on him since his arrest in the San Mateo County case, indicating that they believe he is not a legal resident.
Uc-Cahun's criminal history as a juvenile dates at least from Aug. 13, 2006, when San Francisco police reports show that he was arrested along with two other suspected gang members in the assault on a man at Dolores Park. The victim was hit in the head and threatened with a gun after the group demanded to know whether he was a gang member, according to the reports.
Uc-Cahun did not cooperate with police, refusing even to say where he lived, authorities said. The police report on the attack says Uc-Cahun was a Sureño gang member known as "Tweety" who had "numerous prior contacts" with law enforcement.
Uc-Cahun, then 17, was taken to juvenile hall and eventually was found to have committed felony assault. A San Francisco Juvenile Court placed him on probation and freed him from juvenile hall.
On Oct. 18, 2006, shortly after his release, Uc-Cahun was arrested again, this time for allegedly being part of a group that accosted a stranger on the street and ripped a chain from his neck.
He spent four months in juvenile hall before being found responsible for a single charge of felony assault. He turned 18 by the time he was freed in February 2007 and put on a year's probation.
Arrest as an adult
Uc-Cahun was still on probation May 22, 2007, when he and several other suspected gang members allegedly jumped a man waiting for a ride on the 2700 block of Bayshore Boulevard in Daly City, said Steve Wagstaffe, chief deputy district attorney for San Mateo County.
Three men approached, accused the man of being a rival gang member and started beating him with a broomstick that eventually broke, Wagstaffe said. Other members of the group stripped the man of his jacket, and Uc-Cahun allegedly used a box cutter with a 2-inch blade to slash his abdomen open in two places.
"He basically gutted him, like you gut a pig to get to the meat," Wagstaffe said. The man survived and later identified Uc-Cahun as the man with the box cutter.
Uc-Cahun was arrested in September 2007 and has been held without bail since. In March, following a preliminary hearing, a judge ordered Uc-Cahun to stand trial.
The victim, whom The Chronicle is not identifying at the request of prosecutors, testified at a preliminary hearing that, "I pulled up my shirt and I seen my guts were hanging out of my stomach.
"My friends wanted to get them back," he said, but "all I did was lay down, (and say) 'Man, take me to the hospital.' "
Suspicious letter
A month later, a still-jailed Uc-Cahun allegedly wrote a letter to a friend that provided the name and address of the victim and suggesting that the friend "take care of things," Wagstaffe said. San Francisco police executing a search warrant in May at a house suspected of being used by gang members found the letter, he said.
Uc-Cahun was charged with witness intimidation along with attempted murder, robbery and other gang-related counts.
Morales said other lawyers represented Uc-Cahun when he was a juvenile. As an adult, he said, his client appeared to be a successful participant in a San Mateo County jail education program. Authorities put him in isolation after the letter was discovered, the attorney said.
"He had redeeming qualities," Morales said. "He was doing well in custody. Now it looks like he did a stupid thing (in allegedly writing the letter) out of desperation."
Russoniello said the arrests of Uc-Cahun and Ramos raise the question of whether other juvenile offenders who were kept from deportation in San Francisco went on to become criminal suspects as adults.
"These attacks demonstrate that these people are acting with impunity because they have little to fear," Russoniello said.
Ballard said officials are conducting a "top to bottom" review of practices under the sanctuary city ordinance to make sure San Francisco is complying with federal and state laws related to immigrant felony offenders.
"These are complex questions," Ballard said. "It's not just one ordinance, it's many, many years, going back to 1985, of policies made in many ways. There's a lot of excavation to be done."
