Since Saturday, San Francisco has been hosting a global trade summit with guests ranging from world leaders and CEOs, to protesters and everyday people.
The press expected San Francisco to boost its public image. Instead, a television crew was robbed at gunpoint while covering the trade summit.
Czech journalist Bohumil Vostal told the San Francisco Chronicle they was documenting a bookstore two miles from the summit downtown.
Then, he recounted Sunday night’s incident.
“They were heading at my camera man, aiming a gun at his stomach, and one at my head,” Vostal said in a Monday interview with the outlet.
Vostal named his cameraman, Milan Nosek, as the second victim.
The police confirmed the incident but declined to mention the names of the victims.
“The suspects demanded their production equipment and the victims complied,” the police said in a statement obtained by Fortune. “The suspects then entered their vehicle and fled from the scene.”
Mayor London Breed, a Democrat, told the Chronicle that taxpayers would help to replace the stolen equipment, valued at $18,000.
As host, San Francisco and the city’s partners were polishing sidewalks, scrubbing away graffiti and moving homeless people to accommodations indoors. Separately, Breed has been promoting pop-up shops, new destinations and restaurants in a downtown struggling to regain foot traffic post-pandemic.
The city is not opening special homeless shelters specifically for the summit. However, a group shelter opens Friday and roughly 300 new beds will be available this month and next, said Emily Cohen with the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.
“Not to suggest that we don’t have challenges like any other major city, but we think that because we’re expecting thousands of press from around the world, that will give them a chance to experience San Francisco,” she told The Associated Press.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom told the outlet, “I’m so excited about showing this off to 21 fancy foreign leaders from around the world -– tens of thousands of people that are going to come in and wonder what the hell Fox News has been talking about all these years.”
The annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ summit has been San Francisco’s largest international gathering since 1945, when dignitaries gathered there to sign the charter creating the United Nations.
Of particular note this year is a planned tete-a-tete between President Joe Biden and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the summit — their first direct engagement in a tension-filled year between the world’s two biggest economic powers.
Local leaders see some causes for optimism. This month, Air China resumed direct flights between San Francisco and Beijing after suspending flights just before the pandemic.
It remains unclear whether that optimism will continue after this incident… or after the recovery of the footage.
The Horn editorial team and the Associated Press contribtued to this article.