The now-deceased suspect in Monday’s shooting of the Vapor Room dispensary owner has been identified as 35-year-old Cheasarack Chong, who was shot and killed by police after shooting the dispensary owner, and reportedly lived above the Vapor Room.
Monday night’s police shooting of a suspected gunman at Ninth and Mission streets came hours after that gunman allegedly shot the owner of the Vapor Room dispensary, Martin Olive. Olive was shot seven times in the melee in front of the dispensary, though is reportedly recovering well and able to speak again.
The alleged assailant, meanwhile, somehow managed to escape into an adjacent apartment building. He engaged in a more than four-hour standoff with SF police, before opening fire on SFPD officers, who then shot and killed him.
Cheasarack Chong has been identified as the suspect who was killed by police after Chong allegedly shot dispensary owner Martin Olive. His family says he had struggled with mental illness.
— Mission Local (@MLNow) January 30, 2025
“We pray the victim comes out of this okay.”
via @abineely https://t.co/IK2gtPK2qo
Another piece of this tragic puzzle has just fallen into place. Mission Local reports that the slain gunman suspect has been identified by the SF Medical Examiner's office as 35-year-old Cheasarack Chong. That outlet reports that Chong was registered as living at 81 Ninth Street, which is the apartment building adjacent to the Vapor Room dispensary. That seems to explain why he was able to so quickly access that building and barricade himself before police arrived on the scene.
And Chong reportedly had a history of mental illness. Mission Local points to the 2017 Facebook post seen above from a group called Missing & Homeless, when Chong disappeared from his home in his native Fresno. “Cheasarack suffers mental health issues,” the post says. “He has the mind set of a child.”
The following year, Chong was acquitted of attempted murder charges over an incident on Polk Street in SF where he stabbed a man who’d beaten him up earlier in the day. A jury found the stabbing was in self-defense, and acquitted him of the attempted murder charge. The jury was hung, however, on an assault with a deadly weapon charge.
Mission Local adds that Chong was in possession of a rifle and two pistols at the time of Monday night’s police standoff, all of which he fired at officers during the incident. Police had apparently gotten his family members to record a message asking Chong to give himself up, before resorting to projectiles and gas, though Chong shot at them, and they fired back and killed him sometime around 9:20 Monday night.
We still do not know a motive for why Chong allegedly shot the dispensary owner Olive.
The SF Police Department will be holding a town hall meeting next week to explain the circumstances of the killing, though the date and time have not been announced.
Meanwhile, there is a GoFundMe for Martin Olive’s medical bills, on which a Wednesday update said, “He'll likely be in the hospital for another week or longer, facing immense costs.”
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