GILROY
– Deputy District Attorney Clarissa Hamilton wasn’t surprised
when Samuel Jones was named to the San Francisco Police
Department’s 10 Most Wanted list Thursday.
GILROY – Deputy District Attorney Clarissa Hamilton wasn’t surprised when Samuel Jones was named to the San Francisco Police Department’s 10 Most Wanted list Thursday.
“The guy’s a total menace – I mean, nasty, nasty robberies with pretty severe beatings,” Hamilton said.
Jones, 37, is wanted on a Santa Clara County warrant for armed robberies at cigarette stores in Gilroy and Campbell in May, but he’s also wanted on felony warrants in San Francisco and Contra Costa, according to San Francicsco Police and San Mateo and Sacramento counties, Hamilton said.
This is the first year San Francisco police have assembled a 10 Most Wanted list, complete with photos – an appeal to the public to help them catch these high-priority suspects.
Jones was not on the list when the police debuted it on Tuesday. Two days later, acting on an anonymous tip, police arrested Ronald McFadin, 46, a convicted sex offender who had failed to register with police and who also faced a subsequent charge of sexual battery.
That left an opening for Jones to get into the top 10.
San Francisco police say they have reason to believe Jones is currently living in the East Bay.
Jones is loose because be skipped bail in San Francisco after being arrested for armed robbery there. He never should have been released from jail for any reason, Hamilton said. His Santa Clara County warrant specifies that no bail will be allowed.
“How they ever set bail for this guy, I don’t know,” Hamilton said. “They do things a little differently up there.”
Hamilton said she suspected San Francisco authorities did not know about Jones’ other active warrants.
The Gilroy and Campbell robberies involved a second man, whom Gilroy police caught immediately after that incident. Kofi Deonbi, of the San Francisco area, pleaded guilty on Oct. 22 to two counts of robbery and one count of assault with a deadly weapon. A judge is expected to sentence him to seven years in prison on Friday.
On May 27, Deonbi and, allegedly, Jones beat, robbed and wielded a kitchen knife at a 44-year-old female clerk at Cigarettes for Less, on Wayland Avenue at First Street. The clerk was later treated in an area hospital for severe bruising. Gilroy police Cpl. Kim Merrill arrested the fleeing Deonbi minutes afterward by making a flying tackle from his bicycle.
The 10 Most Wanted, all men, include five alleged killers and several serious sex offenders whose current whereabouts are unknown.
