One month after Hans Herman Haken allegedly spray-painted homophobic slurs on a Castro flower shop and punched a neighbor who tried to intervene, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins has filed felony hate crime charges — a case that might have gone nowhere if one resident hadn't decided to look out his window and refuse to look away.

The May 16 incident outside Chartreuse by Rojé, a flower shop in the heart of San Francisco's most prominent LGBTQ+ neighborhood, combined homophobic vandalism with street-level violence in a sequence that is now headed to a preliminary hearing. The charges, announced June 18, arrived one week before Pride — and they came in no small part because a man living above the shop chose to confront a stranger with a spray can.

The trouble began, according to shop owner Jeffrey Dumlao and witnesses, when an unidentified person threw eggs at a white Cadillac Escalade belonging to Haken that had been parked outside the storefront for several hours, according to NBC Bay Area. What followed, authorities allege, was escalation of a different kind entirely: rather than report the egging, Haken allegedly picked up a spray can and began painting a homophobic message on the exterior wall of the flower shop.

Justin Donnelly, who lives in the apartment directly above Chartreuse by Rojé, heard the distinctive sound of a spray can from inside his home.

"I heard the sound of a spray paint can shaking and saw him spray painting on the wall," Donnelly told NBC Bay Area. "And I decided for whatever reason that I wasn't going to put up with that."

Donnelly went outside and confronted Haken. Bystanders on the scene backed him up, telling Haken that Donnelly had nothing to do with the egging. When Donnelly then photographed the Escalade's license plate to report the vandalism to police, Haken allegedly struck him and drove off — clipping a parked car as he fled.

The incident was a month in the past when Jenkins announced a package of felony charges on June 18: assault, and hate crime allegations attached to the underlying felonies. Haken, 39, was arraigned Thursday and ordered held in custody until a preliminary hearing scheduled for next month.

Jenkins was direct about what the prosecution was meant to signal, particularly in a neighborhood whose safety has been a recurring concern.

"This is a city where we protect our residents," she said after the arraignment. "We protect our visitors. And we will do everything that is necessary to do so."

Donnelly, for his part, said the outcome renewed his sense of the city's capacity to hold people accountable.

"I'm just really grateful that the District Attorney's office and the police are taking this really seriously," he told NBC Bay Area. "The fact is that something like this can happen anywhere. But, in San Francisco we don't stand for it. And we deal with it, so that makes me feel good."

The charges land a week before San Francisco's Pride celebrations, at a moment when LGBTQ+ residents across the country have faced a complicated backdrop of rollbacks at the federal level and high-profile culture-war confrontations. Locally, The Dissent has covered a string of incidents this year where homophobic harassment escalated to violence — including a case at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital where a man simultaneously on parole and probation made repeated threats against a gay healthcare worker.

What distinguishes the Haken case, in the telling of those involved, is that a stranger's decision to act — to photograph a license plate, to refuse to walk back inside — is what put the case in motion. Dumlao said community members at the scene helped immediately in identifying Haken and correcting his accusations against Donnelly, a detail the DA's office will likely lean on as it argues the charges forward.

The preliminary hearing is scheduled for next month. Haken remains in custody.