Not-guilty plea entered in San Francisco hit-and-run death case

The legal fight over Dannielle Spillman’s death returned to the courtroom Friday, but the center of gravity stayed on the 74-year-old woman killed at Mission Street and South Van Ness Avenue in South of Market. Valentino Cash Amil pleaded not guilty, and the judge again denied bond, keeping him in custody as San Francisco prosecutors pursue a murder case built around an alleged hit-and-run that ended in minutes and has now stretched into weeks of grief.

Prosecutors charged Amil on April 16 with murder, a deadly-weapon enhancement tied to his automobile, and felony leaving the scene of an accident. Court documents say he had driven a black 2024 Mercedes Benz E350 sedan to the Chevron at 1601 Mission Street, then stopped partially blocking the sidewalk near the busy intersection. According to the district attorney’s account, Spillman approached, words were exchanged, and she spilled liquid from a water bottle onto the hood before Amil accelerated into her and then drove over her as he fled. NBC Bay Area and KQED reported the collision happened around 3:20 p.m. on Monday, April 13, and that medics pronounced Spillman dead at the scene in less than 10 minutes.

The district attorney’s office said it would seek detention without bail because of the public-safety risk it said Amil posed. He first appeared in court on April 16 and was denied bail, with arraignment set for April 24. When that hearing arrived, Amil entered the not-guilty plea and remained behind bars after the judge again refused bond.

The defense has offered a sharply different account. Seth Morris, Amil’s lawyer, said Amil was driving with his wife and two children, ages 11 and four months, on the way to Disneyland when he encountered Spillman and feared for his family’s safety. Morris said Spillman appeared aggressive, “homeless, intoxicated and belligerent,” and argued that Amil acted in self-defense. That version directly conflicts with prosecutors’ claim that video and witness accounts show a deliberate killing.

Beyond the felony charges, Spillman’s death has resonated because of who she was in the neighborhood. Friends and community members remembered her as a beloved elder in San Francisco’s transgender community, a lifelong musician and a frequent presence at Real Guitars in SoMa. About 20 mourners gathered there on April 20 for a vigil, turning a local music shop into a place of mourning.

Three weeks after the crash, the intersection where it happened is still the same street corner, but the case around it has changed shape. The family, the neighborhood and the city now face the slower machinery of a homicide prosecution, with accountability resting on what the courts can prove about one violent moment on an ordinary San Francisco block.