Two San Diego teenagers have been arrested in the fatal shooting of Annette Pershal, a 68-year-old unhoused woman who had lived on the streets for years and was known to locals as “Granny Annie”.
Pershal was found on the street unconscious on 8 May and taken to the hospital where doctors discovered she’d been shot multiple times with a pellet gun, officials said. She died several days later and her death was ruled a homicide.
Police announced Friday that officers had arrested Ryan Hopkins, 19, and William Innes, 18. In an arraignment on Monday, Innes was charged with murder, unlawful possession of an assault weapon and two counts of assembling a handgun without a serial number. Hopkins was charged with assault with a deadly weapon.
Twenty minutes prior to the shooting, Innes texted a group chat, which Hopkins was a part of, saying, “I want to go hobo hunting with a pellet gun,” the San Diego district attorney’s office alleged in court. Hopkins picked up Innes and drove to the spot where Pershal had been camping for the previous six days, the DA said. Innes then allegedly fired four to five rounds out of Hopkins’ vehicle.
Pershal was repeatedly struck by a pellet gun that had metal bullets, one of which hit her in the shoulder and chest, nicking a major artery, causing internal bleeding and multiple strokes, her daughter Brandy Nazworth told the Guardian on Saturday. Neither defendant sought help for the woman after the shooting and she was found the following morning with a medical emergency, the DA said. She was also hit in the head and hip, and never regained consciousness, said Nazworth, who lives in Louisiana and rushed to San Diego in May to be with her mother in her final days.
An attorney for Hopkins said in court that the group chat involved more than 150 people and claimed the “hobo hunting” text was sent after the shooting and that there was no evidence Hopkins saw the message. A judge ordered both men be held without bail. Innes faces a 25 years to life sentence, and Hopkins faces three years. Lawyers for the men, who both pleaded not guilty, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Pershal grew up in San Diego and often slept near a public library, 7-Eleven convenience store and other businesses in the Serra Mesa neighborhood of the southern California city, Nazworth said: “She just loved the area and her community so much and didn’t want to leave.”
Pershal had long been waiting to get placed into housing and was working with case workers, but she was unable to secure a spot in the area that could accommodate her, her daughter said. She used a walker and couldn’t move into a place with stairs.
The killing of Pershal has shone a harsh light on the violence that unhoused people face on the streets of San Diego, the second largest city in California which is grappling with a rapidly worsening homelessness and housing crisis. A government count earlier this year estimated that more than 5,000 people are living outside on the streets or in cars in San Diego county, with 1,500 of them age 55 or older.
Researchers also recently found that more than half of all unhoused adults in California are over age 50, many experiencing homelessness for the first time while struggling with housing costs and financial crises. There have also been high-profile incidents of violence against unhoused people across the Golden State, including a spate of murders in 2016 in San Diego and recent assaults captured on camera in San Francisco.
Pershal’s mother had owned a house in the area near where Pershal died, but had to sell the property, and Pershal became homeless around 2017 after the death of her boyfriend, Nazworth said. Nazworth and her husband visited her often and tried to get her to move to Louisiana with them, but Pershal wanted to stay in the neighborhood where she’d spent her life. Nazworth would send her money and at times Uber food deliveries directly to her tent.
Brandon Nazworth, Brandy’s husband, said they met people in San Diego who talked about how Pershal took care of others struggling on the streets: “Someone from the community told us, ‘When I first ended up on the streets, she took me under her wing and made sure I was taken care of.’ She was always trying to help.”
“She was a grandmother figure, and she wore her ‘Granny Annie’ title very strongly,” Brandy added.
Last year, Pershal was placed in a rehabilitation center to help her with foot problems, but she ended up back on the street without housing. At one point, she was also in an encampment with close friends, but it eventually got shut down and scattered her community, her daughter said. Police enforcing anti-camping policies had also put her in a shelter at one point, but she ended up back on the streets and lost her tent and belongings in the process.
The city at one point discussed building a shelter in her neighborhood, but it was not built, Brandy said: “She was already there, waiting for that.
“I wish there was more help and accommodations for senior citizens,” her daughter continued. “I hope at least this brings some light to the elderly who are homeless and how unprotected they are. They are very vulnerable, and I feel like this was a hate crime. There was nothing but hate they showed my mother. I still question why they attacked her. How threatening could my mother have been to these two young men?”
She suggested that part of the mens’ sentence could involve doing work to help unhoused people, such as building shelters.
The Nazworths had planned a trip to San Diego earlier this year to try and help Pershal, but ended up coming to organize a memorial instead. Brandy made signs that said “Queen of S.M. [Serra Mesa]. Granny Annie will live on. RIP 1955 – 2023.” Locals have maintained a memorial site for her since her death.
Pershal never complained about life on the streets, her daughter added. “She’d tell me about people who would say hello to her every morning. She’d always say everything is ‘okie dokie’. She was kind of a hippie … I’d like her remembered as someone who was full of love – for people, animals, for everybody.”
