Joey Alexander, a 60-year-old man and Urban Alchemy community ambassador, was shot outside the San Francisco Main Library on Larkin Street late Friday afternoon, September 26, 2025, after he asked a man to stop using drugs near families. According to Urban Alchemy and police, the man pulled a short-barrel shotgun from his bag, reportedly saying “F— Urban Alchemy,” and fired from roughly 20 feet away. Alexander was rushed to Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital in critical condition.
He endured multiple surgeries over the next three days, including the amputation of a leg, but he never regained consciousness and died on Tuesday, September 30.
The 60-year-old male victim—known to colleagues as “Moe”—had rebuilt his life after 23 years in prison, finding purpose in steady work helping to keep the peace outside the city's main library across from City Hall. Co-workers and leaders at the nonprofit described him as humble and steady, someone who learned to de-escalate tense encounters without force and took pride in protecting a space where children and families passed every day. Flowers and photos went up at Urban Alchemy's Tenderloin office as colleagues mourned, remembering a man who embraced small freedoms after release and spoke with his family regularly.
San Francisco police say the suspected gunman, 42-year-old Edmund Lawrence Bowen, was arrested near the scene shortly after the shooting. Prosecutors later said video allegedly shows Bowen retrieving an object wrapped in red cloth and firing the shotgun toward Alexander; a second person was struck by shrapnel. Bowen was booked into jail, and the district attorney charged him with murder and assault with a firearm, with an enhancement for using a firearm in the commission of the murder; he remained in custody pending arraignment. Authorities said a short-barrel shotgun and two shells were recovered.
The killing reverberated through debates over how cities respond to open-air drug use and disorder: Urban Alchemy's unarmed “street ambassadors,” many of them formerly incarcerated, operate without security-guard licenses and routinely face risk in the Tenderloin and Civic Center. City leaders and the nonprofit's executives publicly honored Alexander's work and called for accountability, noting he is at least the third Urban Alchemy worker shot while on duty and the first to be killed.
