People v. Gippson CA1/1

I.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL

BACKGROUND

A. The iPhone Theft On the afternoon of February 7, 2023, F.C., a 69-year-old woman, boarded a MUNI bus near the intersection of Geary Boulevard and Divisadero Street. She was holding her iPhone in one hand and her payment card in the other when she felt “someone snatch the phone off [her] hand.” She turned around and saw a man, whom she later identified as Gippson, running away while holding the phone. F.C. got off the bus and began chasing Gippson, “scream[ing] at the top of [her] lungs” about her phone. A nearby Uber driver saw the two run into an apartment complex and drove around to the other side, where Gippson soon emerged. The Uber driver honked at Gippson, who dropped the iPhone and kept running. As it happened, two police officers were on the other side of the street from where Gippson was running, and the Uber driver honked to get their attention and pointed at Gippson. The officers quickly apprehended him. Meanwhile, the Uber driver got out of his car to retrieve the iPhone. He then returned it to F.C., who had appeared on the scene. B. Evidence About the iPhone’s Value The phone taken from F.C. was a 512-gigabyte iPhone 14…