Mom found murder: 14-year-old girl and19-year-old lover arrested

By Amy Kniss

Tylar Witt, 14, and her boyfriend Steven Boston Colver, 19, were arrested in San Bruno, Wednesday morning. Police suspect the pair had been on the run since Friday, June 12, after stabbing Witt’s mother 47-year-old Joanne Witt to death in the El Dorado Hills home mother and daughter shared.

Authorities discovered Joanne Witt’s body Monday morning. Coworkers at the county's Department of Transportation reported her missing after she failed to show up for work; police found Joanne Witt stabbed to death when they went to check on her wellbeing, after receiving the missing person report. Coworkers told police, and attendance records at the department confirm, that Joanne Witt had not been to work since June 10.

Of the weapon used in the murder, El Dorado Hills Sheriff’s Captain Craig Therkildsen reported: "It was some kind of stabbing instrument, but we don't know what it was." Police have not yet recovered the weapon.

Investigators suspect that Joanne Witt’s murder occurred because she wanted to prevent Tylar, Joanne’s 14-year-old daughter, from continuing to date 19-year-old Colver. Sergeant Jim Byers, spokesman for the El Dorado Hills Sheriff’s Department, told reporters: "We do believe that the relationship between the daughter and the boyfriend may have led to this murder.”

San Bruno Police are not releasing details regarding the specifics of the pair’s arrest. Yet, mall employee, Jeysol Urbina, who said she witnessed the arrests, told ABC7 News, that police blocked off the parking lot between an AT&T store and a Red Lobster restaurant in the strip mall. She also said she saw a black jeep surrounded by police cars.

"There was a guy and a girl dressed in black like gothic,” she said. Urbina also told ABC7 News, that the pair got pulled out and searched, but admitted she had not witnessed this part of the incident herself.

On Friday night, the night police believe Joanne Witt was murdered, Tylar Witt and her boyfriend Steven Colver rented a room at the Holiday Inn on Van Ness and California, in San Francisco. Monday morning, the day Joanne Witt was found murdered, the San Francisco Department of Transportation impounded Clover’s car, from the 500 block of O’Farrell Street.

Exactly how or when the teens made their way from San Francisco to San Bruno, where they were arrested for Joanne Witt’s murder, remains unclear. Police officials from El Dorado Hills plan on picking up Tylar Witt and Steven Colver in the next few days. Until then both are being held in San Mateo County.

Anarchists Attack Union Square Shops

By Amy Kniss

Union Square, San Francisco – May 1, 2009

High-end Union Square stores felt the wrath of a “black bloc” Friday night, just before nine p.m. That’s when, according to witnesses, a herd of about 50 protesters wearing black bandanas over their faces and cloaked in black hoodies tore through O’Farrell and Grant Streets, leaving havoc in their wake.

The group, police believe to be anarchists, may have splintered off from a May Day protest on immigration, before smashing at least 15 storefront windows in the Union Square shopping district. Debeers, Longchamp, Prada, Armani, Tumi, Guess and Montblanc were among the stores hit by the masked mob. Bystanders said the group shot paintballs and burned fake $100 bills while using bricks and sledgehammers to smash-in windows. Their message: down with capitalism.

The vandals may see their mission as successful, as employees of stores with smashed windows reported that sales, on Saturday, were slower than usual. Managers worried that the boarded up windows gave the impression that stores were closed or under construction.

The dissidents’ “black bloc” approach relies on the premise of revolutionary, anarchist street-action. The “black bloc” encourages participants to engage in direct action against the forces of corporate and state repression. Dressing in black with their faces and heads covered makes identifying individual participants nearly impossible. Zapatista rebels in Chiapas are known for using this technique. Thus far, its been successful in San Francisco: police have no suspects and have made arrests related to the anarchist outburst.

For more info: Watch the video at ABC 7 Bay Area: Protesters Vandalize Downtown Stores

Schools Prepare for On-Campus Threats

Will the economy tanking and the upsurge of people facing foreclosures, unemployment and bankruptcy erupt in increased levels of violence? How could it not? Coping with the stress of a life on the brink of disaster, whether real or preconceived, isn't a usually a recipe for calm or foresighted action.

Maybe schools and companies should be doing more to prepare for an armed attack. In the last decade, in the U.S., more students were killed on campuses as a result of gunmen than from earthquakes, fires and tornadoes combined! Yet, schools around the country still spend time each month practicing disaster drills, despite the infinitesimal percentages that such an event will occur.

It seems that some California elementary schools are not only revising their "Lockdown" procedures, but eliminating mandatory drills that prepare students for a natural disaster. Instead, these schools will instead practice for more realistic threats: Gunfire on campus, armed assailant in the building and civil disruption.

Students practice laying on the floor of their classrooms in the dark for a minimum of 30 minutes. They also learn where the safest places to hide from an attacker on campus and what a secured room looks like. According to one school's "Lockdown" procedure teachers should only resume normal classroom activities after a "recognizable school staff person" directs them to do so over the school intercom.

While admirable, school's efforts to prepare for a more likely threat seem less than adequate. Couldn't a gunman take a "recognizable school staff person" hostage and have her give the all clear over the intercom?

After all, you never know where a man with a grudge will decide to release his wrath.

Repossession by Force

Diamonds are forever, unless you break up and someone wants the ring back. Breast implants, however, are even more permanent. When gift giving, buyer beware: breast implants (or implants of any kind, for that matter), aren't returnable and should your lover leave don't expect her to leave the implants at the door before she slams it shut.

Apparently no one sent Thomas Lee Rowley the memo.

After Rowley's girlfriend left him the 28-year-old Victorville man decided to take matters into his own hands. Telling his roommate, "I'm gonna cut 'em out and get 'em back." Rowley set out to reclaim the implants, he says, he purchased for his 26-year-old ex girlfriend.

Waiting in the bushes outside his ex's mother's house, Rowley held a large kitchen knife. When his ex approached he leaped from the bushes and plunged the knife into her head and breasts more than six times. While his efforts were too imprecise to allow him to repossess the implants, they did serve to puncture one.

Rowley is now on trial for attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, stalking, burglary, and false imprisonment. Too bad he didn't get the memo: if you give a woman breast implants, she takes them with her when she leaves.