Art gallery owner Collier Gwyn arrested for assaulting homeless woman

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Just hours after District Attorney Brooke Jenkins issued a warrant for his arrest, art gallery owner Collier Gwin is reportedly in the custody of the San Francisco Police Department.

In the January 9 incident, which was caught on video and quickly went viral, a white man – believed to be Gwyn – was seen spraying a homeless woman of color on the sidewalk with a hosepipe, sparking widespread outrage. The woman, known in the North Beach area as Cora or Q, was initially reluctant to press charges.

An SFPD spokesman who received the comment confirmed to The Standard that Gwin was arrested at the 700 block of Montgomery Street at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday and taken to the county jail where he was arrested on battery charges.

The block is also home to the Foster-Gwin Art & Antiques store where the spraying incident took place. The episode, widely interpreted through the prism of lingering racial and class divisions in San Francisco, quickly became national news, with many observers condemning Gwin’s actions as brutal, while others came to the defense of the business owner.

The gallery later saw its Yelp page curtailed after a flurry of critical reviews, with an SFPD patrol car parked outside for several days.

This is an evolving story.

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