A 35-year-old man wanted on a federal warrant rode an electric scooter into a 72-year-old woman on Powell Street Sunday night while fleeing an SFPD officer, fracturing her elbow and wrist. District Attorney Brooke Jenkins has charged him with seven felonies, including elder abuse.

The July 13 incident — spanning several Tenderloin blocks before ending with an arrest at a nearby ramen restaurant — puts a specific, named face on the sidewalk scooter hazard San Francisco has spent years failing to police, and adds an unusual elder abuse charge to a criminal case more typically framed around traffic violations.

A 35-year-old San Francisco man wanted on a federal warrant rode an electric scooter into a 72-year-old woman on Powell Street Sunday night while fleeing an SFPD officer, fracturing her elbow and wrist and requiring surgery. District Attorney Brooke Jenkins announced charges July 16 against Melthon Branch that include seven felonies — among them elder abuse, a count more often associated with nursing-home neglect than street-level collisions.

According to the DA's office, the chase began around 8:30 p.m. Sunday, July 13, when an officer spotted Branch riding an electric scooter on the sidewalk near Ellis and Jones streets in the Tenderloin. The officer recognized Branch from prior encounters and knew he was wanted on an outstanding U.S. Marshals warrant. When the officer activated lights and sirens and ordered him to stop, Branch fled.

Prosecutors say Branch sped north, weaving between sidewalks and traffic lanes, riding the wrong way through multiple intersections, and forcing pedestrians to jump out of his path. On the west sidewalk of Powell near O'Farrell Street — a block from Union Square, frequented by tourists, shoppers, and hotel guests — he struck the 72-year-old woman, throwing both of them to the ground. She suffered a fractured elbow and broken wrist that required surgery, according to the DA's office.

Branch did not stop. He abandoned the scooter and fled on foot, ducking into the 200 block of O'Farrell Street, where officers found him hiding under a table at a restaurant, according to SFist, which identified the location as presumably Hinodeya Ramen. When officers searched him, they recovered suspected methamphetamine, more than $2,000 in cash, a digital scale, drug-packaging materials, and three credit cards belonging to other people.

Jenkins charged Branch with evading police causing serious bodily injury, felony hit-and-run, elder abuse, assault with a deadly weapon, battery causing serious bodily injury, driving against traffic while evading police, and possession of methamphetamine for sale. Prosecutors are seeking to hold him without bail, arguing he poses an ongoing public safety risk.

The elder abuse charge is the sharpest edge of the case. Under California law, victims 65 and older receive protected-class status, and the charge carries sentencing enhancements that can substantially extend prison time beyond what the underlying assault would carry on its own. Its application here — to a crash caused by a fleeing suspect on a sidewalk — reflects a consistent posture from Jenkins' office toward crimes that cause serious harm to older San Franciscans.

The incident arrives against a backdrop The Dissent has tracked for months. Since at least April 2026, modified e-scooters have routinely ridden full-speed on San Francisco sidewalks with minimal enforcement consequence — a pattern this paper documented in April and May reporting on the city's selective ticketing of cyclists while scooter riders went largely unchallenged. What happened on Powell Street on July 13 is an extreme iteration of that same hazard: a scooter used as a getaway vehicle, at speed, on a pedestrian walkway, operated by a man already wanted by federal authorities.

The nature of the U.S. Marshals warrant against Branch has not been made public. The victim has not been identified, and her condition beyond the initial surgery was not available at the time of publication.