Jessica Nicole Alva, 35, of San Francisco's Bayview neighborhood, was found unresponsive at her home on Kirkwood Avenue near Third Street on the morning of April 2, 2019. Her boyfriend, Clayton Rhoades, called police and paramedics to the scene at approximately 6:30 a.m. to report an apparent hanging. Alva was hospitalized with severe brain injury and remained in a coma at San Francisco General Hospital's Neuro-Intensive Care Unit before she died four days later, on April 6, 2019.
She was the mother of six children and had recently completed a substance-recovery program, after which she worked as a mentor and advocate at the Friendship House Association of American Indians in San Francisco's Mission District. Family members said she had bruising and other injuries visible while hospitalized and that she had described being in an abusive relationship with Rhoades in the weeks before her death. No clothing or personal-effects details from the morning of the incident have been publicly reported.
The San Francisco Police Department's Special Victims Unit opened an investigation after the death was initially treated as a probable suicide, following public pressure from Alva's family and Native American community advocates. Rhoades was interviewed by police on multiple occasions, denied any involvement in causing her injuries, and has not been charged in connection with her death. He was separately arrested and briefly held in April 2019 on an unrelated parole-violation warrant out of Shasta County before being released. As of the most recent public reporting, the case remains open but inactive, with no arrests made.
The nonprofit Sovereign Bodies Institute has included Alva's case among its documented Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) records. Anyone with information is asked to contact the San Francisco Police Department's Bayview Station at 415-671-2300, or submit an anonymous tip via TIP411 (text 847411 with keyword "SFPD").
