San Francisco hospital worker target of alleged hate threats, stalking case

A threat inside Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital has become a test of how San Francisco protects workers at its busiest public hospital. Prosecutors say Solomon Kahiviano Casperson, 52, made homophobic criminal threats against a hospital worker in two separate incidents on June 1 and June 8, including a threat to kill the employee.

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins announced on June 16 that Casperson was charged with multiple felonies, including hate-crime allegations and stalking. The District Attorney’s Office said it will seek pretrial detention because it views him as a public-safety threat, and said he was scheduled to be arraigned in San Francisco Superior Court.

The case lands on a campus that is far more than an emergency room or inpatient ward. Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center provides full inpatient, outpatient, emergency, skilled nursing, diagnostic, mental health and rehabilitative services, and it is the city’s largest acute inpatient hospital for psychiatric patients. Ward 86, the HIV clinic on the same campus, serves patients living with HIV and those at risk for HIV acquisition, with care built for uninsured, low-income and medically underserved people.

The hospital’s safety record is already under intense scrutiny after the December 4, 2025 assault on UCSF social worker Alberto Rangel at Ward 86, an attack that ended with his death. That incident triggered a comprehensive safety and security assessment across the San Francisco Department of Public Health. On April 22, SFDPH said the assessment was complete and pledged $15 million annually for safety investments across the system.

The new case also highlights how San Francisco says it wants bias-driven threats handled. City leaders announced a unified protocol in 2023 for responding to hate crimes and prejudice-fueled incidents, and the city’s hate-crime data portal says bigotry must be the central motivation for an incident to qualify as a hate crime under state law. Statewide, California’s 2024 hate-crime report showed reported hate-crime events rose 2.7% from 2023 to 2024, while reported hate crimes against LGBTQ+ people rose 13.9%.

For ZSFG staff and patients, the question now is not only what prosecutors allege, but whether the protections around one of San Francisco’s most essential public hospitals are strong enough to keep hate-fueled threats from becoming part of the workday.