The spoon switch under the pop bumper is Probably stuck closed. Or the metal pop bumper ring rods or wafer could be broken causing it to stick.
Mechanical first. Electronics second.

Compare it to the others. Take off the pop bumper cap. And examine everything above and below the playfield. And make sure everything is moving correctly. And switch switches under the pop are actuating correctly. Diode orientation, wiring etc.

Does the Switch stack have the capacitor on it? Someone mentioned with their Taxi the capacitor was internally shorted causing theirs to fire. After you replace the transistor does it lock on as soon as the game is turned on or only once the game starts

I’m not sure if Elvira has it or not as I don’t own one, on Taxi, the pop bumper switch stack has a resistor and a blue capacitor soldered to the switch lugs. I had a resistor pop off which caused mine to lock on and blow a transistor. I’m not sure if Elvira was built the same way or not, may be worth looking at though as both are 11B

If im correct the diode for the coil is on the Auxillary power driver board and not on the coil. If it’s just the diodes on the switch stack check the pre driver Q72. It could also be bad causing a lock on. There should be 3 components on that circuit, driver (Q73), Predriver (Q72) and the diode (not sure what number as I don’t have the schematic in front of me). Any one of those could also be causing problems

Edit: the diode you’re looking for is definitely on the auxiliary power board. It’s one of them In that picture of your F4 fuse

It’s odd that replacing the F4 fuse has anything to do with that transistor though, the ball popper shouldn’t share any wiring with the thumper bumpers which come off the red/ white wire (F1) and F4 is your 50v line with a yellow/violet wire.
Check for shorts between the 25v (red/white) and the 50v (yellow/violet) if the red white (F1) is over fused it would cause a transistor to blow before the fuse make sure it’s 2.5a 250v
The wire you’re looking to follow is actually in the photo of your trasister you replaced. The only way F4 has a path to that transistor is a short somewhere on the playfield. Look carefully. The 50v on yellow/vio should only be connected to the knocker, the ball popper, and the 3 bank target reset. That 3 bank target and ball popper are close to the bumpers so I’d look for a short somewhere near that. That’s the only thing I can think of for the common wires. If nothing is found there since it seems to keep affecting the same bumper, check that ground wire ( looks like blue/orange) from the photo and make sure it isn’t exposed to one of those things on the 50v circuit (yellow/violet). As a test you can unsolder that ground wire from the coil and see if the fuse still blows. If not the problem is along that wire. Sorry for the long post. I’m just updating as I think of stuff as I would talk myself through finding the issue on my own game.

Were you able to figure anything out @dreggs88?