Man Killed By Vallejo Police Was Son Of Longtime Anchor Oyster Bar Worker

A Vallejo police officer killed Neftali Monterrosa’s son Tuesday morning

Sean Monterrosa, a 22-year-old San Francisco resident, was killed by an as-yet-unidentified Vallejo police officer as he knelt outside a Walgreens Tuesday morning. According to the SF Chronicle, Monterrosa is the son of Neftali Monterrosa, who for 24 years has worked at the Castro’s Anchor Oyster Bar, a longstanding local seafood restaurant and fish market.

According to Vallejo Police Chief Shawny Williams, the officer who shot Sean Monterrosa — an 18 year veteran of the force — was called to the scene shortly after 12 a.m. Tuesday on reports of a robbery. Williams says that as Monterrosa was on his knees on the pavement, the officer thought he saw a gun in his waistband. When Monterrosa moved his hands, the officer “responded to a perceived threat” and shot him five times, through the windshield of his police department vehicle.

But the item the police officer saw wasn’t a gun, Williams admits, it was a hammer. The San Jose Mercury News reports that “it took more than 24 hours for Vallejo police to publicly confirm that an officer had killed a man,” and that at the press conference at which Williams discussed the shooting, the chief refused to answer questions on if “he believed the officer’s actions constituted excessive force.” Williams did, however, list previous criminal allegations against Monterrosa, and said that his department has been “overwhelmed” during the last few days of protest against the death of George Floyd, as well as concurrent incidents of property damage and theft.

Speaking with ABC 7, Neftali Monterrosa — who was a doctor in his home country of Argentina, but after moving to the U.S. entered the restaurant industry — says that Vallejo police didn’t even let them know about his son’s death. Instead, Sean’s girlfriend had to tell his family that he had been killed. “She got the phone call and they say, Sean is dead. I started crying,” Neftali Monterrosa says. “I called my wife after that and she was very strong.”

And in other news...

• In a reaction to the many lists of black-owned restaurants that are currently in circulation, food writer Ruth Gebreyesus writes that “The absurdity of these lists is the suggestion that dining at a black-owned business in any way addresses the brutal and deadly force that police continue to unleash on black people” and that “At best, it scratches the itch of ego-driven guilt.” [KQED]
• Meanwhile, Hunter’s Point pop-up Vegan Hood Chefs says they’ve seen a surge in business, as has Bayview bakery Yvonne’s Southern Sweets. [NBC Bay Area]
• Crowdfunders have stepped up to support endangered LGBTQ bar Aunt Charlie’s, raising over $71,000 to save the struggling Tenderloin institution. [SF Examiner]
• Employees at the Whole Foods on Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue got a text from the company this week, warning them that a colleague had tested positive for COVID-19. The store remains open for business, and details on when the worker was last serving customers has not been provided. [Berkeleyside]
• There’s a new face coming to food section at SF’s newspaper of record, as Serena Dai, the current editor of Eater New York, is headed West to become the Chron’s senior editor overseeing food, travel and magazines. This is gonna be fun. [SF Chronicle]
• The owner of Station House Cafe, the Pt. Reyes bar and restaurant that announced its closure after its landlord raised its rent from $8372 per month to $28,000, says that the spot has gotten a “new lease that extends through September, with the current [rent] of $8,372 reduced by about 80 percent.” [Point Reyes Light]
• Bricoleur, a Windsor winery that’s been over five years in the making, expected to throw a grand opening party on May 2. That, of course, didn’t happen, but on May 23 (the earliest day they could do so, given the area’s public health orders) they finally opened for business. [SF Chronicle]
• Creator, SoMa’s venture-funded robot burger restaurant, is “on a temporary hiatus” as of Friday. “The stay at home order, combined with extended work-from-home policies (which we support), have emptied out SoMa,” they say via Instagram. The tenor of the post suggests that the closure isn’t just temporary, as they say that they are “excited to create something new for our guests that provides the same gratification and wonder that 680 Folsom has provided since our opening.” With a reported $18.4 million in funding, one might assume that wonder won’t be that hard to come by.