Potrero Hill shooting victim was RJ Dusuau, 17, a Washington High student training to be a youth counselor

The person killed in the Oct. 16 shooting on Potrero Hill's Wisconsin Street was Rolando Jose Dusuau, 17, a San Francisco high school student his family called RJ, Mission Local and the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Police said officers responded to the 1100 block of Wisconsin Street at about 8:38 p.m. and found a person with gunshot wounds. Paramedics tried to save him, but he died at the scene. The block borders the Potrero Hill Terrace and Annex public housing complex and Starr King Elementary School. Mission Local noted that the police statement misidentified him as an adult male.

An arrest, but no motive

Police arrested a juvenile the next day after serving a search warrant on the 1800 block of 25th Street, the Chronicle reported. The suspect was booked into the Juvenile Justice Center on a homicide charge and has not been named because of his age. Police have not said what led to the shooting or how the two knew each other.

What his mother says

His mother, Christina Onopa, told Mission Local that RJ left home that Friday evening to meet someone she took to be a friend. He stopped answering her calls and texts. She filed a missing persons report Saturday morning and learned late that night that he had been shot about 13 minutes after leaving home. "We don't know who and we don't know why," she said.

Onopa said RJ was on track to graduate from George Washington High School next year, was working toward his driver's license, and was finishing training to become a youth counselor at Horizons, a San Francisco nonprofit for at-risk Latino youth and other youth of color. He loved basketball and video games. He lost his father to suicide when he was 14. Onopa started a GoFundMe, which Mission Local said had raised about $6,500.

Second killing at the complex this year

The Chronicle counted it as San Francisco's 22nd homicide of 2026. It was the second fatal shooting this year at Potrero Hill Terrace and Annex, a complex of roughly 600 units that is being redeveloped. In February, Cornelius Wigfall Jr., 44, was shot and killed in a parked car and a child was wounded.