San Francisco DA flip flops on charging transient who bashed ex-fire commissioner with crowbar after public outcry
April 26, 2023
San Francisco prosecutors made an abrupt about-face on Wednesday and
said they will now move ahead with charging a vagrant who beat a former
fire commissioner with a crowbar — after The Post revealed they were quietly trying to drop the case.
The District Attorney’s new spin comes one day after prosecutors reportedly decided transient Garrett Doty was acting in self-defense when he cracked the skull of former commissioner Don Carmignani on April 5 and informed him they would be dropping the charges.
After Carmignani spoke out about the decision and released a new video showing the attack, they quickly backtracked.
“We have not dismissed the charges in this case,” San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said in a statement.
“Holding violent offenders accountable is a top priority for our office to protect public safety,” Jenkins added. “Following the arrest of Garrett Allen Doty, in connection to an assault on Don Carmignani on April 5, 2023, we filed multiple felony charges against Doty and sought to detain him for violent felonies.”
A day previously Carmignani said he had been informed the charges were to be dropped because prosecutors said he instigated the assault by deploying pepper spray on the homeless man, whom he was trying to move on from outside his mother’s home.
Prosecutors said they prepared a preliminary hearing in the case to give Carmignani an opportunity to give a statement on Wednesday — before pushing it off to Thursday.
“At our request, the court continued this case until tomorrow for a hearing,” the DA’s statement said. “We have subpoenaed [Carmignani] to appear tomorrow through his counsel. The defendant [Doty] remains in custody.”
Jenkins maintained Carmignani “has not provided an interview to the San Francisco Police Department on this case despite multiple requests,” although Carmignani’s attorneys claimed the opposite was true and authorities had not contacted him since the attack to hear his side of things.
“We are hopeful he is available to testify in open court, as he has now given an on-camera media interview about the attack from his recollection,” Jenkins said in the statement.
Footage shows Doty rearing back to strike Carmignani with a metal rod.
Carmignani, 53, has admitted he approached Doty after the city neglected his mother’s calls to 911 asking for help — she had witnessed three people consuming drugs and harassing neighbors in her entryway.
Joe Alioto-Veronese, a prominent attorney and friend, said when Carmignani asked them to move, he was bludgeoned in the back of the head by Doty, which injured the former smoke-eater’s skull and brain.
Video shows Doty swinging the metal rod, backing a heavily bleeding Carmignani against the wall of a gas station store, hitting Carmignani and chasing after him down the street. Doty, 24, was later arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon.
The former fire commissioner suffered skull and brain injuries in the attack.
“[Doty] was actually seen swinging the pipe and walking around the neighborhood after the attack,” Alioto-Veronese said.
Dotty’s public defender, Kleigh Hathaway, is asking for the charges against her client to be dropped and made shocking claims against the former fire chief to ABC news.
“Police have reason to believe Carmignani was involved in eight separate acts of violence … perpetrated against people who are homeless,” she told the network, without elaborating.
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