SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — San Francisco police are investigating the beating death of an elderly, well-known local artist.
Seventy-four-year-old Stuart Jackson was well-known and well-liked in the North Beach area of town. He liked to drink coffee and draw pictures of people.
His friend, Joanna Lioce, tends bar at Vesuvio, where she said he was a regular.
“He would often draw people who were sitting at tables near him and sell his art to them and things like that,” Lioce said. “But, he was always just a really nice kind of shy, quiet guy.”
Stuart loved drawing people, everywhere he went. Joanna said he was on his way to see an art exhibit in the Mission around noon on Dec. 5 when he was hit and fell to the ground.
He hit his head on the pavement. The incident happened on the corner of Van Ness and Market Street.
She does not understand why anyone would want to hurt him.
“He kept to himself. He didn’t get involved in anything,” Lioce said. “He didn’t…if something was going on he–you know–I’m sure he, maybe, would have stepped in if something was happening to someone, but he was a very quiet man. I cannot imagine…even if someone said that he had done something to provoke that, I wouldn’t believe them…and I only know him as a regular at the place where I work, and I still know, knowing him for that long that there is still…I just can’t imagine him doing anything that would have provoked even…I mean anything.”
His family is putting a memorial together for him in North Beach.