On the early morning of November 16, 2025, 20-year-old Kaylyn Tafao Olumua, a man from San Francisco, became the victim of a sudden burst of gunfire on a busy Mission District corner. Just after midnight, a fight broke out near the intersection of 16th and Valencia streets, outside the Skylark bar, in an area that on weekend nights is usually crowded with people heading between restaurants, clubs, and late-night spots.
Police dispatchers described how the confrontation spilled into the street behind a self-driving Waymo vehicle moving east along 16th Street, and at about 12:25 a.m. officers and paramedics were sent to reports of people shot. When they arrived, they found two men on the ground with apparent gunshot wounds and rushed both to the hospital with life-threatening injuries. One of them, identified by the San Francisco Office of the Chief Medical Examiner as Kaylyn Tafao Olumua, did not survive.
In the hours that followed, investigators pieced together the chaotic moments around the shooting. Witnesses and dispatch recordings indicated that a fight had erupted before the shots rang out, and that someone involved in the altercation struck the back of the Waymo vehicle as it passed, prompting authorities to contact the robotaxi company for possible video evidence of what happened in the seconds before and after the gunfire. The Waymo was reported to have captured the incident on its cameras, though police did not publicly confirm the company’s involvement, and representatives declined to comment. On the street, evidence markers and police tape ringed the block as officers searched for shell casings and other clues, while paramedics’ efforts at the scene and at the hospital underscored how quickly a routine weekend in the Mission had turned into a fatal crime scene.
Investigators quickly focused on a suspect. Within a short time of the shooting, San Francisco police tracked a man to the Visitacion Valley neighborhood and arrested 23-year-old Larry Hudgson Jr. of San Francisco. According to police and subsequent reports, he was booked into county jail just after 9 a.m. on suspicion of murder, and a firearm was recovered at or near the scene of the crime. Later, however, officials confirmed that the arrested man had been released pending the ongoing investigation, signaling that prosecutors and detectives were still working to determine precisely what unfolded during the fight and who bore legal responsibility for the gunfire that killed Olumua and left the other victim in critical condition.
In the Mission District, the shooting revived long-running worries about safety around 16th Street. Nearby business owners spoke about their fear that violent incidents like this one could drive customers away, emphasizing their desire for a stronger police presence at night and on crowded weekends when bars and restaurants are at their busiest. City Supervisor Jackie Fielder, whose district includes the area, said she had been briefed by police and was told the shooting grew out of an altercation rather than drug dealing or unhoused activity, a distinction that did little to blunt the sense of vulnerability among people who live and work there but helped frame the event as a conflict that escalated rather than random or indiscriminate violence. At the same time, police pointed out that, despite this killing, San Francisco as a whole was on pace for one of its lowest homicide totals in roughly seventy years, a statistical comfort that contrasted sharply with the grief and anger surrounding Olumua’s death.
Even after the arrest and release of the initial suspect, the case remains formally open, and detectives have continued to seek more information about the moments leading up to the shooting. Authorities have asked anyone who witnessed the confrontation, has video from the scene, or knows more about the dispute that preceded the gunfire to contact the San Francisco Police Department’s tip line or text a tip referencing the case. For Kaylyn Tafao Olumua’s family and friends, memorial pages and candle-lighting tributes online now stand in for the future he lost, marking him among the growing list of gun violence victims in the city. The intersection of 16th and Valencia, illuminated by bar lights and robotaxi headlights on the night he was shot, has become part of that story—an ordinary corner where a brief, violent encounter ended a life and left a community demanding answers and accountability.
