Viral video shows homeless fighting in squalid conditions on San Francisco street

The Bobster

Senior News Editor since 2004








Viral video shows homeless fighting in squalid conditions on San Francisco street​



By
Patrick Reilly


September 9, 2022 10:42pm
Updated





Two homeless men wrestle on the ground, while a third whacks one of them with a broom.
Video appears to show wild fight between homeless men in San Francisco. jterrell/Twitter


A viral video making its rounds on social media offers a grim new snapshot of San Francisco’s surging homelessness crises as two men can be seen brawling amid squalid conditions on a city sidewalk.
The shocking scene was filmed and posted to Twitter by J. Terrell Allen, who said he stumbled upon the wild fight in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood on an evening walk.
Video, posted to Twitter Thursday, shows two men — one of whom is shirtless — wrestling on the ground that’s littered with debris as the majority of other apparently homeless people look on with little interest.
Two homeless men wrestle on the ground, while a third whacks one of them with a broom.Two apparently homeless men wrestled on the ground, while a third man hit one of them with a broom, video show.jterrell/Twitter




One other person, however, joins the fracas, and whacks the shirtless man with a broom.
“SOMA isn’t safe. Just happened. This is disgusting,” wrote Allen, who could not immediately be reached for comment late Friday.
“I love going for long walks and passing by this every single day in my hood,” Allen added in a separate tweet. “Love the smell of crack and poop. Beautiful San Francisco.”
Amid the chaos, one man places a pair of shoes in a plastic garbage bag before walking away, according to the video that garnered 2.4 million views by late Friday.
Suddenly, a man on an electric scooter speeds into the frame and skids to a stop right in front of the two men fighting. The fighters then split up, with the struggle apparently over.
San Francisco, a city of over 800,000 people per the 2020 census, could have as many as 20,000 homeless people living on the streets by year’s end, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.
 
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