'Prolific violent offender' arrested for threatening children, parents with loaded gun outside SF school

Police arrested an armed man Tuesday after he is alleged to have threatened parents waiting to pick up their children at a San Francisco elementary school.

Police responded to a 4:11 p.m. report of a potentially armed man making threatening gestures and incoherent statements to parents outside a school at Grove and Cole streets just north of the Panhandle neighborhood.

Officers responding encountered 39-year-old Brandon Paillet, of San Francisco, and asked if he was armed.

Although he told officers he had no weapons, a loaded .38 revolver fell out of his backpack when he threw it at officers in his attempt to evade them. One officer drew his weapon and other officers secured the suspect's weapon and took him into custody, according to police.

Paillet is the same person interviewed by KTVU's Evan Sernoffsky after he entered a disabled woman's San Francisco home days after being released from jail.

Paillet was arrested on suspicion of five felonies:

  • Possession of a firearm on school grounds; 
  • Possession of firearm by a felon;  
  • Possession of ammunition by a felon; 
  • Carrying loaded firearm by a prohibited person; and 
  • Post-Release Community Supervision probation violation