The San Francisco district attorney’s office filed hate crime charges Wednesday against Dmitri Mishin, the 51-year-old man who is accused of entering a synagogue during a religious study session last week and firing blank rounds using an imitation gun.
Mishin was scheduled to be arraigned Thursday on eight criminal counts, including two felonies for interfering with religious worship, felonies enhanced by charges he did so in service of a hate crime, plus one misdemeanor for disturbing a religious meeting and five misdemeanor counts of brandishing an imitation weapon.
Prosecutors will be asking the judge to keep Mishin jailed before trial because of a risk to public safety, the DA’s office said. He remained in custody Wednesday.
Mishin, a Russian speaker, allegedly entered the Schneerson Center, a small shul in the Richmond District serving mainly Russian Jews, during a study session being conducted by Rabbi Bentziyon Pil the evening of Feb. 1. A source close to the Russian Jewish community in San Francisco said Mishin suffers from mental illness and alcohol overuse — a background check by J. revealed he had been arrested several years ago for DUI and drug charges in Northern California.
Witnesses to the Schneerson Center incident said the intruder spoke in imperfect Russian and mentioned the Israeli intelligence service Mossad. He then fired between six and eight shots in less than three seconds, a surveillance video shows — the shots produced a muzzle flash and were described as “very loud” by Pil, who said he ran into the kitchen to grab a knife but when he returned the suspect was gone.
In an interview with J. Wednesday afternoon, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said her administration would be taking a muscular approach to the Mishin prosecution and other…
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