The latest weekend murder in SF: At around noon on Saturday, a 66-year-old Asian man was shot to death after a road rage incident in Viz Valley. Witnesses say the man was arguing with three men in their late teens or early 20s after a fender bender right before the shots were fired. After shooting the man, at least one of the suspects then stole the man's car. The car was later recovered; the cops say someone tried to torch it, but failed.

Okay, here's something that's not car or shooting related -- according to Matier and Ross, a 52-year-old grandmother's suing the Giants because she broke her ankle sliding on the giant Coke bottle slide (known as "the Guzzler"). She's asking for $2 million plus punitive damages.

...And that's not even the curviest part! A car chase that started in Marin County around 3:00 a.m. Monday morning ended abruptly when the driver, speeding at around 75 mph over the Golden Gate Bridge, overshot the turn from Doyle Drive onto Lombard Street and flipped over. A open fifth of Hennessey was found in the car, and the passengers are in SF General with non-fatal injuries.

Your SF Labor Day weekend homicide count: 3. One person shot in the Bayview early Sunday morning, one person in Visitacion Valley shot dead mid-Sunday morning (after being chased into a garage by two teenagers on bikes), and one found dead early Monday morning near the Balboa Park station. You can keep up with the year to date homicide count (77) at the SF Crime Blog, like we're doing. Also: a man was shot in the back this afternoon, also in Visitacion Valley. He's expected to survive. (It's not much better in Oakland either, with four shootings over the weekend. They're at 91 for the year.)

A woman in Burlingame was charged with felony child endangerment last Thursday afternoon, after bystanders freed her crying unattended 2-year-old from her car. On the bright side, the child was fine, but it was 92 degrees outside and the temperature inside the car was measured about about 125 degrees. The mother said she'd just run to the grocery store for about 20 minutes. This is the second baby in a hot car scare in the South Bay this week, with a Mountain View nanny arrested after leaving a crying baby in a car with a small gap in the window for about 30 minutes on Tuesday.

[sorry we're late today!]

Close call! A truck driver careened off the San Mateo Bridge yesterday afternoon, but managed to miss both the bay and a shed full of explosive material right by the bridge. The driver missed the shed by mere feet -- it sounds kind of like an exciting ending to an action-adventure movie ( -- the hit of the summer!). They had to use two tow trucks to get the truck off the side of the bridge. Fortunately, the truck was empty or it probably would have gone straight into the shed (and then, boom.)

More Your Black Muslim Bakery news: the attorney for the handyman (with the awesomeness of the name LeRue Grim) who's been arrested for journalist Chauncey Bailey's murder is now saying that the handyman was told to take the fall for the head of the bakery, Yusuf Bey IV. Bey and the handyman were apparently put in a room together during the interrogation but for some reason, the Oakland PD didn't tape their conversation. Also, per a tip from a gentle reader (thanks, gentle reader!), check out LeRue Grim's attorney disciplinary record. Sex with a 20-year-old wife of a client? Oh my! (More stuff here too.)

And a guy who worked with Jerry Brown in law enforcement at the state Dept. of Justice has resigned after getting busted for a DUI.

Picture of the San Mateo Bridge by Beej Jorgensen, off flickr.

Huh -- remember that huge fight we all got into about whether or not to put cameras at high-crime intersections in SF? Turns out the cameras at the public housing sites are pretty much useless. To wit, they've only been used for evidence in two cases, neither of which were the homicides that they said the cameras would help solve. Whether this is because cameras don't deter crime, or because the restrictions that the civil libertarians have put on the camera usage is debatable. Also, it could just be that the cameras we have aren't great, and are particularly not useful at night, when most of the crimes occur.

Matier and Ross report that Attorney General Jerry Brown, the man in charge of enforcing the law in California, had his car broken into a few blocks from City Hall, where it was parked outside the State Building. We're just impressed Jerry Brown managed to find street parking on Golden Gate Avenue.

And finally -- who's looking for more news about crime in San Francisco? We got sent a link to the new blog San Francisco Crime, which is not only putting up regular updates about assaults and gunshots and the like, but is also keeping that ongoing 2007 murder log for San Francisco that we've been meaning to try and compile but still haven't gotten around to, along with a list of suspicious deaths. Man, there's no need for us to even try to compile a Blotter anymore, this website's really good! Where are you getting all this stuff, San Francisco Crime? Do you have a police radio blotter? Can we borrow it if you do?

Campus tree residency news! At Cal, it turns out those people living in the trees to protest the UC's plan to cut them down themselves did significant damage to the trees in question by cutting off the tops of the trees to put in their sleeping platforms. Ah, the sweet smell of irony. Meanwhile, at rival Stanford, they've finally evicted a veteran who's been living in the tree grove off Palm Drive for almost 10 years. (Does anyone actually pay to live at Stanford anymore? Goodness.)

In San Mateo, they're investigating claims that a police deputy was busted in the act in a county courthoouse. The deputy was busted by a court reporter, who saw a pair of male buttocks dashing down a back hallway. No one would go on the record, except for a spokesperson for a judge on that floor, who said it definitely didn't happen in that judge's courtroom. People are wondering if the sheriff can really make a fair ruling on this, given that the sheriff was recently himself busted at a brothel in Las Vegas.

And maybe it's not your dryer after all. Two cats in Los Altos have brought home, one by one, seventeen odd socks over the last few weeks. After flyering their neighborhood ("Neighbor, are you losing socks?"), they've figured out someone has a bag of laundry in their driveway (though that person hasn't come by to reclaim the socks, and refused to comment to the newspaper when they called.) One of the cats' owners notes there's a bag of some other laundry in that neighbor's driveway too. "I just hope the cats don't bring home the underwear." Ah, it reminds us of the Beanie-baby stalking cat in the East Bay around Christmas of last year.

Dang! A huge fight on Durant Avenue by Telegraph in Berkeley Sunday night -- around 50 people were involved and they had to close off the area for an hour. A 14-year-old was sent to the hospital.

And two masked men robbed the Tiffany's in the Stanford Shopping Center last Saturday. They walked in, told 15 customers and 12 employees to get on the floor, smashed a display case with a hammer, and ran off to their getaway car, which was last seen speeding down Sand Hill. The car was stolen earlier in the week from Fremont.

Yuck. A SFPD cop was arrested for soliciting a 14-year-old prostitute in Oakland. The cop's a motorcycle squad supervisor and is a 37-year veteran of the force. The 14-year-old said it was her first time on the streets, the cop was apparently cooperative when the Oakland PD caught the two of them in his car, and told the Oakland officers that he thought the girl was 18.

How the mighty broker has fallen in these days of the downturn in the local real estate market! Curbed SF passes along the following warning -- there's a couple robbing realtors at house showings. While one distracts the reality by talking about buying the house in all cash, the other one grabs everything in sight. The male uses the name Paul Chapman or Paul McClung, the woman is older than him and has "uneven smokers' teeth." They sometimes bring a small dog to the open houses.

And here's a heartwarming story to end your crime blotter news! An abandoned shepherd-lab mix puppy, found unsuitable for adoption due to his boisterous personality, turned out to be an ace at law enforcement! He's going into training to become a search-and-rescue dog. Yay! (also -- do you want to be an animal control officer? The City of Oakland is hiring.)

As discussed in the SFist Contributes tips page, what people heard in Ingleside Heights early yesterday morning was a mysterious car explosion. Witnesses saw a man park a car, get out of the car and into someone else's, and then the parked car burst into flames. Around 7:00 a.m, another car mysteriously exploded, this time in the Tenderloin at Ellis and Taylor. The two incidents aren't thought to be related -- but how weird.

Gimmi Rhoads-Haro, an animal hoarder, was caught in Marin with her two children (5 years old and 2), four cats, and a pit bull living in a filthy apartment. The neighbors called the authorities due to the "overpowering stench of urine" coming from the place. When the police gained entry into the house, the children were half-clothed, and walking barefoot on a carpet soaked with urine. Rhoads-Haro didn't take well to the raid, at one point telling the cops to "take a flying f*** on a rolling doughnut." Rhoads-Haro has a history with Marin -- as a child, her family's house in San Anselmo was considered so filthy it was declared a public health hazard, and she was arrested in 1990 for hoarding 56 animals.

And six people arrested and seven guns confiscated at the Fanatics Sports Bar at Cesar Chavez and Third Ave. early Sunday morning, as two cars exchanged gunfire. Witnesses said they saw gunfire coming from a Nissan SUV but when the cops arrived, the shots were coming from a 98 Jaguar. One man was shot but is expected to survive.

One person is dead after a dramatic shooting in the Sunset early Monday morning -- the shots were fired at a moving car, which then flipped over and crashed. The Chron has some unsettling pictures of the scene.

Firebug! On Thursday May 17th, the cops found this guy at the scene of a fire at a pizza restaurant in North Beach at 6 a.m. (we're thinking it's the Cable Car Pizza on the 400 block of Broadway, but aren't sure.) The man claimed he'd been locked in the bathroom when the restaurant closed at 3 a.m. and had set the fire to get attention. When the restaurant owner said some money was missing from the register, the man waved around a wad of cash and said he'd rescued it from the fire. He was arrested. Three days later, the same guy called the cops saying he'd left all the gas burners in his apartment on. He's since been checked into the psych ward.