The only witness with the wherewithal to move in the following seconds, to try to do anything at all, was a fifteen-year-old Hispanic youth named Luis Santillo, who was on his way home from his after-school job at the fast-food place down the street on 16th and Guerrero. He, too, saw the athletic man take the leaps, aim the gun, and fire.

'Hey!' he yelled. 'What the hell…' He started running toward Mullen's car.

Meanwhile, ignoring Luis and everything else, the assailant pulled the door of the car, reached in, grabbed, and with one hand pulled Mullen out, lifted his wallet, and dumped his body on the street.

Luis, twenty feet in front of the car and still coming, still yelling, froze as the vehicle accelerated, the driver's door swinging half-open. The car fishtailed slightly on the pavement, corrected, then jumped forward through the intersection, its left bumper hitting Luis, bouncing him first off the hood and windshield, and then throwing him seventy-six feet into a juniper bush in the divider strip, which saved his life, although the pins in his hip would probably prevent him from ever jumping athletically like the shooter.

The car, gaining speed, 'went off like a rocket, just going and going 'til it was out of sight.' (Riley Willson, a car mechanic at his own shop, Riley's Garage, on the northeast corner of 19th and Dolores).

On June 19, the car – or what was left of it – was recovered. Its doors were gone, as were the tires. The body had been tagged by what must have been every kid with a can of spray paint in the neighborhood. The car had been abandoned on Moscow Street hard by the Crocker-Amazon Playground, a common dump spot south of the 280 Freeway, almost to the city limits.

Besides the traces of cocaine, marijuana seeds and roaches, beer cans and other debris, the car yielded such a beautiful fingerprint – in blood – on the back side of the steering wheel, that Shawanda Mboto, the San Francisco Police Department specialist in these matters, let out a warwhoop from her perch by her microscope.