SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) – A viral photograph of a woman flashing an AK-47 assault rifle around San Francisco is now being used by federal investigators to keep her boyfriend locked up.
The photo was released by San Francisco police in the summer of 2021 after the young woman and a Cadillac driver allegedly participated in an illegal sideshow on Barneveld Avenue and McKinnon Avenue. The eye-catching image went viral on social media.
In court documents recently filed by the United States Attorney's Office, the suspected sideshow driver was identified as Christopher Gonzalez Nunez, 26, of Hayward.
Nunez is a felon, a member of the San Francisco Mission District Nortenos, and is the woman's "significant other," prosecutors wrote. He has "a disturbing history of gang participation, gun possession and manufacturing, and reckless driving," court documents state.
The FBI raided Nunez's house on Woodroe Avenue in Hayward earlier this summer. Agents said they seized numerous illegal firearms, ammunition, and gun assembly tools.
When FBI agents opened Nunez's backpack they allegedly found a 9mm handgun, an unserialized AR-15 style pistol, an unserialized Glock-style handgun, three AR-style 30-round magazines, and extended magazines. Nunez was arrested and charged with federal firearms crimes, as first reported by the Mercury News.
Nunez has a history of participating in sideshows, investigators said. When the viral photograph was snapped, "he drove, while his significant other leaned out his passenger window armed with an AK-47. Not only does the car match a vehicle that Gonzalez Nunez owned at the time, but Instagram users 'tagged' him in photos from the incident and mentioned him by name," prosecutors wrote.
Nunez liked the photo so much that he made it into a T-shirt, prosecutors said.
The AK-47-wielding woman's name was not included in the court documents. Prosecutors, however, seem to know who she is. The U.S. Attorney's Office wrote, "Gonzalez Nunez’s significant other has a criminal history of her own, including a battery conviction and arrest for assault causing great bodily injury, robbery, and domestic violence."
Prosecutors filed a motion on August 18 asking U.S. Judge Donna Ryu to keep Nunez in custody as he awaits trial.
Prosecutors said Nunez is a dangerous person. His past gang conduct, "combined with his continued possession, assembly, and apparent distribution of firearms -- including untraceable ghost guns -- poses an unmitigable danger to the public," the U.S. Attorney's Office wrote.