A 35-year-old woman living at Berkeley's Harrison Street homeless encampment was arrested after allegedly smashing a ceramic coffee cup over a man's head, hitting him with a barbecue grill, and then chasing him with a sledgehammer in what police described as an unprovoked attack. Megan Strahl is now being held on $70,000 bail at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, with an arraignment scheduled for Wednesday.
According to The Berkeley Scanner, the attack happened near the encampment along Harrison Street close to Eighth Street, and left the victim, a man in his 40s, with a head wound after the cup shattered and cut him. Berkeley firefighters helped the man after he flagged them down, and Berkeley police later confiscated the sledgehammer. Strahl was arrested at the end of Eighth Street near the Albany border.
The outlet's report notes that Strahl has been on probation since July for a vandalism conviction, and that she also has a stay-away order barring her from Blue Willow Teaspot on 10th Street. She has a 2022 felony arson conviction as well, according to the same account.
A Second Attack the Night Before
The Saturday morning incident was not isolated. Per the same report, a second attack occurred Sunday night in the same area, in which a different victim was struck on the head and body. That victim was not the same man injured in the Saturday morning encounter, and he left the scene before police arrived. A local hospital separately reported that a man sought treatment after being struck with a crowbar, the outlet notes.
Under California Penal Code Section 245(a)(1), assault with a deadly weapon other than a firearm is a “wobbler” offense, according to FindLaw, punishable by up to four years in state prison if charged as a felony or up to a year in county jail as a misdemeanor. Because Strahl was already on probation, a judge could also revoke that probation and impose the maximum sentence for her underlying vandalism conviction based on a preponderance of the evidence, without a jury trial, under Penal Code Section 1203.2, according to Cron Israels and Stark.
A Camp Under Strain
A Camp Under Strain
The encampment's population has swelled dramatically this year, growing from roughly 37 residents in late 2024 to more than 80 people by mid-2026 as municipal abatement efforts remained stalled in federal court. That growth came even as Berkeley's overall unhoused population rose only 4% to 880 individuals in the city's preliminary 2026 Point-in-Time count, according to Berkeleyside, a figure notable because homelessness across Alameda County as a whole dropped 13% during the same period.
Court Orders Limit City's Options
The city's inability to fully clear the site traces back to federal litigation. U.S. District Judge Edward Chen has ordered Berkeley officials and the Berkeley Homeless Union to walk local streets together to identify and pre-approve alternative sidewalk camping sites before the Harrison Street encampment could be cleared. Earlier court rulings from April also required the city to provide replacement survival gear, including tents and sleeping bags, and to offer disability assistance whenever removing property during cleanups, per the Western Regional Advocacy Project.
The corridor has also seen public health emergencies layered atop the violence. In June, Berkeley public health officials confirmed human and animal cases of leptospirosis, including the death from the disease of a man who had allegedly bred rats in an RV; the human cases involved people living about a mile from the encampment and were described as the first known human cases in Berkeley. Just weeks before Strahl's arrest, an unhoused man in his 70s was found dead on a sidewalk in the 900 block of Harrison Street shortly before the city was scheduled to clear personal property from the block, a case Hoodline covered in man found dead near Harrison camp, with authorities reporting no immediate signs of foul play.
The corridor has also seen public health emergencies layered atop the violence. In June, Berkeley public health officials confirmed human and animal cases of leptospirosis linked to rats at the encampment, including the death of a resident who had bred rats in an RV at the site, marking Alameda County's first human cases of the disease in over a decade. Just weeks before Strahl's arrest, an unhoused man in his 70s was found dead on a sidewalk in the 900 block of Harrison Street shortly before the city was scheduled to clear personal property from the block, a case Hoodline covered in man found dead near Harrison camp, with authorities reporting no immediate signs of foul play.
