Inmate charged in 2015 quadruple slaying in S.F.

Daryis Mackey holds a photo montage of victims Yalani Chinyamurindi, David Saucier, Harith Atchan and Manuel O’Neal at a vigil last year. Daryis Mackey holds a photo montage of victims Yalani Chinyamurindi, David Saucier, Harith Atchan and Manuel O’Neal at a vigil last year. Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close Inmate charged in 2015 quadruple slaying in S.F. 1 / 4 Back to Gallery

A 27-year-old San Francisco man already serving time in prison was accused Friday of taking part in one of the city’s most horrific killings in recent memory, the gun massacre of four young men who were attacked in January 2015 while sitting in a Honda Civic in the Hayes Valley neighborhood.

Lee Farley, who despite his young age has an extensive rap sheet, was pulled from his cell at a federal lockup in Atwater (Merced County) and booked into San Francisco jail on charges of murdering Yalani Chinyamurindi, 19, David Saucier, 20, Harith Atchan, 21, and Manuel O’Neal, 22.

Family members of the men who were ambushed and slain expressed relief Friday that an arrest had been made after hearing for months that investigators knew who committed the crime but could not move forward without more evidence. Madrid Johnson, O’Neal’s uncle, noted that investigators believe there were three to four people responsible for the hail of bullets.

“Maybe one person will lead them to the others, and I just pray that they get the rest of them and that they will be prosecuted to the highest extent of the law,” Johnson said. “It’s not going to bring back four young men. It’s not going to bring my nephew back. But at least we know someone is making an attempt to do something about these murders.”

The four men had been in the black Civic when the shooters opened fire at Laguna and Page streets about 10 p.m. The car had been taken from outside a home in Burlingame more than two weeks earlier, but neighborhood leaders familiar with the victims said they had not stolen it. One of the men, they said, had purchased the vehicle a few days before the shooting.

Investigators have long said the shooting appeared to be gang related and probably linked to assailants claiming turf near the scene. However, family members of some of the victims said they weren’t all affiliated with a gang. Chinyamurindi had been trying to cash his paycheck on a dinner break from his restaurant job in nearby Japantown, said his mother, Salahaquekyah Chandler.

“He was just a beautiful Hebrew young man who did everything society tells you to do — go to school, get a job,” Chandler said Friday. “He was talented, he was gifted, he was into performance arts. He did everything he was supposed to do.”

Both Chandler and Johnson said they did not know Farley, who was also charged by the San Francisco district attorney’s office with shooting at an inhabited vehicle, being a convicted drug offender in possession of a gun, and participating in a criminal street gang.

According to court records, Farley has a lengthy criminal history. In 2007, he was convicted of dealing cocaine base. The next year, he was convicted of drug possession. In 2010, he was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm, and in 2012, he was convicted of second-degree burglary.

He was sentenced in April to 76 months in federal prison for possession of a stolen gun, a charge that stemmed from a residential burglary in San Francisco in which city officers caught him fleeing from the home.

Farley is expected to be arraigned Monday in the quadruple homicide case, prosecutors said.

San Francisco’s acting police chief, Toney Chaplin, was in charge of the homicide detail when the four men were killed and has long spoken of the impact he felt from the shooting. He told The Chronicle this year that he believed the violence was unplanned — committed on the spur of the moment when the shooters happened to spot the victims while driving by.

“I promised the victims’ families that the San Francisco Police Department would do everything we could to solve this brutal crime,” Chaplin said Friday in a statement. “I have been updated regularly by the Homicide Detail and I am happy to announce that the Department has arrested a suspect and begun the process of bringing justice and healing to the victims’ families.”

The killings took place on the edge of the Western Addition, a neighborhood moving forward from a tragic legacy of violence. Several of the victims had ties to the Western Addition, and in the aftermath of their deaths, community leaders rallied for justice and an end to a pervasive “no snitching” attitude.

The African American men died as the Black Lives Matter movement was gaining momentum across the country, and many in the community were concerned their deaths would be written off and never solved. After the shooting, someone stuck flyers on neighborhood cars calling the victims “dead criminals.” Many in the community questioned why the killing of Kathryn Steinle, a 32-year-old white woman who was randomly gunned down on the Embarcadero later in the year, gained so much more attention.

Chandler and community leaders fought to make sure the killings remained in the public eye, working with Board of Supervisors President London Breed, who represents Hayes Valley, on legislation creating a system to fund rewards for information leading to arrests and convictions in unsolved cases.

“I refused to have my son be one of those statistics,” Chandler said. “I want this to send a message to all these other families that when their child is murdered, no matter how they felt they lived their lives, it doesn’t matter. We will still fight for them because the very life that they possessed was sacred and they’re worth fighting for.”

Vivian Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: vho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @VivianHo