It was a chilly, cloudy midnight in 2019 when 21-year-old Fernando Madrigal drove through the Mission District with fellow Norteños gang members hunting for rivals.They had a tip that a teenager walking through the neighborhood was affiliated with the Army Street Gang, a chief antagonist of the Norteños. They found him at 24th and Capp streets. Fifteen-year-old Day’Von Hann wasn’t in the Army Street Gang – or any gang. It didn’t matter.The Norteños believed their tipster. So Madrigal shot the teenager to death with an AR-15 assault rifle, according to court documents.Three weeks later, Madrigal stood at a rally on the steps of San Francisco City Hall, railing against gun violence and calling for reforms at juvenile hall.Despite his involvement with the Norteños, Madrigal also lent his time and his voice to multiple nonprofit groups, calling for reforms to the juvenile justice system even as he was in a violent gang.At one point during the demonstration, he embraced a woman named Sha’ray Johnson. She was there because she’d lost her 15-year-old son to gun violence just a few weeks earlier.Johnson had no inkling at the time that the man she was hugging was her son Day’Von’s killer.

Madrigal joined community calls to shut down the juvenile justice center in favor of other approaches that emphasize counseling, and started attending youth empowerment conferences and speaking out for justice reform.

City Supervisor Hillary Ronen helped Johnson and her family with housing outside the city after the murder. And nearly two months after Day’Von’s killing, she also wrote a letter to a judge on behalf of Madrigal in his petition to get off probation early for a carjacking conviction.