A land dispute in San Francisco turned violent Tuesday.
The fight is over who controls a strip of land one block long near 22nd and Harrison streets. No one is certain who owns it, and there is no agreement on how it should be used.
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WATCH HEREElizabeth Creely with Friends of Mission Greenway, knocked a bag of Cheetos away from Rudy Rucker of Monkeybrains Internet Service, who had built a slab for his planters -- that she was tearing down.
She starts taking video and he knocks the camera out of her hand.
The woman then uses that hand to punch Rucker in the face.
“We want to use this as it’s been used historically,” said Monkeybrains Internet Service CEO Alex Menendez.
The strip of land is right behind his company’s building.
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Mission Greenway has other ideas for the former Southern Pacific right of way. So do other nonprofits.
“The obvious use would be open space – a park or something like that,” said a San Francisco resident.
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SIGN UP A big part of the problem is that no one knows exactly who owns this land.
These strips over the many years have been divided into dozens of trusts across the country – some people don’t even know they own some of this. And the city of San Francisco has no legal option whatsoever in deciding what happens out here.
“She kind of came up and gave me a body check – kind of bounced into me,” said Rucker. “The four of them had their cameras out, and I knocked one of the cameras out of her hand … and she came in and gave me a punch in the jaw.”
Creely said she felt intimidated and fought back.
The land is in Supervisor Hillary Ronen’s district. A spokesman for Ronen said she has offered to bring the two sides together to be a peace negotiator.
So far, neither side has taken her up on it.
