Woman killed, 2 men wounded in midmorning SF shooting

A woman was killed and two men were wounded in a shooting Wednesday morning at Plymouth Avenue and Broad Street in the Oceanview neighborhood of San Francisco. A woman was killed and two men were wounded in a shooting Wednesday morning at Plymouth Avenue and Broad Street in the Oceanview neighborhood of San Francisco. Photo: Filipa A. Ioannou / The Chronicle / / Photo: Filipa A. Ioannou / The Chronicle / / Image 1 of / 7 Caption Close Woman killed, 2 men wounded in midmorning SF shooting 1 / 7 Back to Gallery

A woman was killed and two men were wounded in a broad-daylight shooting Wednesday at a crime-plagued intersection in the Ocean View neighborhood of San Francisco, police said.

Multiple gunshots rang out around 10:40 a.m. at Plymouth Avenue and Broad Street, the same intersection where a teenager was gunned down in January. When police officers got to the scene, they found the three victims suffering from bullet wounds, said Capt. Denise Flaherty of the Taraval Police Station.

The woman was identified as 65-year-old Lian Xiu Wu, the San Francisco medical examiner’s office confirmed Thursday.

The gunfire may have come from a car, officials said. Xiu died after being rushed to the hospital, Flaherty said.

The woman, a well-known figure in the neighborhood, lived just steps from where she was shot, said Gwen Brown, executive director of a nearby nonprofit group called Inner City Youth. Neighbors said she was often seen around the neighborhood collecting recycling and may have been doing just that when she was shot.

“I feel violated,” Brown said. “Ten-forty in the morning? What were you trying to prove? And that poor lady. She was one house away from her front door. She literally died looking at her apartment building.”

Flaherty said the two men shot were being treated at a hospital for injuries that were not considered life-threatening. One of the wounded men worked for a cleaning company doing a project in the area, Flaherty said.

Brown said she and her staff were inside their building when the shooting broke out.

“We came out and saw people on the ground,” Brown said. “It was chaotic. It just felt so random. It wasn’t like a car driving off or anything like that. I was hesitant to go over there because I didn’t know what was happening, and I just saw these guys on the ground and they were moaning.

“The lady, she was just going home,” Brown said. “She lived right there. Her sister came out and she didn’t know what was happening, and then she walked up and saw it was her sister and started screaming.”

Flaherty said the intersection has been the scene of a number of violent incidents since November, including four shootings. On Jan. 20, 18-year-old Josiah Lightfoot, a 2016 graduate of Balboa High, was shot to death at the intersection.

“This intersection continues to be a concern for us as a Police Department and, more importantly, the community,” Flaherty said. “We are doing all we can to work in partnership with the community ... to act as guardians for this community and not just to be here as a sign of enforcement.”

Brown said the corner seemed to be a target, but could not speculate as to why.

“I don’t know if it’s a gang thing, if they’re just coming over here and trying to prove a point,” she said. “All the victims were older people. It’s not the young people. I don’t know.”

Leo Young, 61, said that particular corner is “where everyone hangs out.”

“It’s an unsafe place,” Young said. “There are people from Bayview, Sunnydale, Potrero Hill coming here and shooting.”

“I used to hang out down there, but not no more,” chimed in Tyrone Owens, 58. “I keep walking because you never know when they’re going to start shooting.”

As she came down from the shock of what she witnessed, Brown took stock of her emotions and said she didn’t feel unsafe or afraid — she felt mad. She said she had warned city officials about the intersection, and had been advocating to get cameras installed.

“I work in violence prevention, and it’s been a hell of a time trying to convince the city that we need more resources out there,” Brown said. “They don’t invest the way they should. This neighborhood is consistently overlooked and underserved. The people over here, we realize we got to fend for ourselves. We feel abandoned.”

Supervisor Ahsha Safaí said he has been concerned about the recent uptick in violence, and on Friday he walked the neighborhood with new Police Chief William Scott to discuss increasing foot patrols and overall police presence in the area. Word on the street, Safaí said, is that the impetus for the shootings is “an ongoing turf battle that’s been going on for a long time between Sunnydale and Lakeview.

“Unfortunately, it’s just gotten more brazen,” he said. He said he was looking into “the right level of intervention.”

“Today, the person who created this heinous act should feel the full force of the law, but at the same time, we need to be reaching out to a lot of these young men,” Safaí said. “We need to get out there and start talking about opportunities to intervene in these people’s lives before they get involved with violence and illegal activity.”

Filipa A. Ioannou and Vivian Ho are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: fioannou@sfchronicle.com, vho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @obioannoukenobi @VivianHo