SFist Blotter

In SF's first homicide of 2005, a 21-year-old woman stabbed a Novato high schooler to death outside the Denny's on Fisherman's Wharf. The high schooler and four of his friends were allegedly attacking the woman and her friends around 6 a.m. on New Year's Day when she pulled out the knife; other reports claim that the woman may have started the confrontation by using racial epithets. There were about 88 homicides in SF in 2004 (scroll to item no. 6).

A woman in Rohnert Park was killed in what looks like a drunk-driving accident on New Year's. We say "looks like" because the cops found in the car not just an open container of alcohol, but also a live 3-foot boa constrictor. The police believe that she was wearing the snake to a New Year's party -- since an autopsy revealed that she had not actually been strangled to death.

And in an enterprising effort, a man in southern Alameda County first stole a tow truck in San Mateo and then used the tow truck to steal a Corvette in Fremont. The police found the tow truck and the 'vette parked on the street near a law office in Hayward, and cornered the man on the office's second floor. The man then bust through a window and fled, at which point the cops and the dogs set chase. They hunted him down into someone's back yard, where he began swinging lawn furniture at the officers. He was pepper-sprayed and brought in.