A woman who was protesting the November 2023 APEC summit in San Francisco was left with devastating injuries from being sucker-punched by a man who had just shown up to volunteer at the event. She's now suing the organizers and the man himself.

The incident happened on November 15, 2023, amid a series of scattered protests focused on a range of issues, as international delegates and President Biden came to town for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders' summit. This was just a month after Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel, and Israel's subsequent mass bombing campaign in Gaza, and protest energy was high all over the Bay Area.

Protester Sarah White, now 41, was seen in a video (see below) shouting "Shame!" and "People over profits!" at a man identified later as Michael Davies, 42, who had just shown up at the APEC summit to work as a volunteer. Davies found himself outside the gates of the heavily guarded Moscone Center event and unable to easily get back inside after he'd been told he needed to dress more appropriately to volunteer — Davies's wife reportedly dropped off a sport jacket and change of clothes for him nearby.

Just prior to the assault on White, Davies, who was wearing a conference lanyard, was seen being hassled by a large group of protesters, and he then went to a Secret Service agent who was standing behind a fence, apparently to ask advice about how to get back into the event.

The video above, posted to Xitter, did not include the punch being thrown. But a different video shot from another angle, obtained by the Chronicle, appears to show Davies throwing the punch at White without warning, and then walking away up the sidewalk, where he was pulled aside and detained by SFPD officers.

White was knocked to the ground, hitting her head on a metal plate there, and can be seen lying on the ground reeling. A Chronicle photographer later captured an image of her friend and a police officer helping her walk away from the incident, with paper towel or gauze in her mouth, while Davies sits on a curb, handcuffed.

As White tells the Chronicle, her injuries were not minor. She sustained a broken jaw — broken in two places on opposite sides of her face — a skull fracture, a brain bleed, teeth knocked in, and fractures to the part of her skull that connects to the spine. She spent four nights in the ICU at Zuckerberg SF General, and had her jaw wired shut for two months as her jaw healed.

As she puts it, "He completely rearranged my bones in my body forever," and she tells the paper that doctors told her if she sustains another concussion, it could be fatal. She also continues to suffer from the effects of a traumatic brain injury, including short-term memory loss.

White now has a lawsuit, filed Monday, that alleges assault, battery, and other charges, seeking unspecified damages for her injuries — naming Davies, the National Center for APEC and the APEC Secretariat as defendants. While APEC was supposed to be doing background checks on volunteers, the suit alleges that Davies obtained a volunteer lanyard without any such check — he has a criminal history that includes a vandalism incident in San Francisco, and a Florida conviction for being drunk and disorderly and resisting arrest.

The suit contends that the summit organizers hired Davies, even though "unlike other volunteers available for hire, had not received security credentials from the US Secret Service."

As one of White's attorneys, Adam Shearer, tells SFist, "Michael Davies clearly assaulted Sarah White — that's not in dispute.  But others share responsibility.  The entities that hired and placed him at APEC's CEO Summit failed to screen and train him for protests they knew were coming.  Their negligence contributed directly to what happened."

Separately, Davies faces a criminal proceeding in San Francisco, where he's charged with felony assault. In that case, Davies and attorney Tony Brass are seeking mental health diversion in lieu of jail time — something that Davies received for the earlier vandalism case.

White tells the Chronicle that she sees bad faith in the effort to avoid punishment for the assault, saying, "From my perspective, it’s really hard not to feel like the system is being used in a deeply inappropriate way to benefit people that it was not meant to be there for."

A judge is expected to rule on the diversion request in the coming weeks.

Previously: Man Identified as APEC Volunteer Allegedly Punches Protester as Demonstrations Get More Hostile

Photos via Sarah White