Criminal Justice
Google Street View of the 400 block of Duboce Avenue, where Friday morning's stabbing occurred
In a week already marked by violence, the San Francisco Police Department is investigating another homicide.
On Friday morning, officers discovered a 64-year-old woman had been stabbed to death inside a home on the 400 block of Duboce Avenue, in the Duboce Triangle.
Deputy Chief of Investigations Raj Vaswani tweeted Friday night that the victim was found in the common area of an apartment. Officers arrested a 41-year-old suspect, Jesus Esparza, who was known to be a neighbor of the deceased.
Contacted for details on Saturday morning, SFPD replied that officers responded to a report of an unresponsive person inside a building at approximately 11 a.m. Friday. Medics found the victim and attempted to administer aid, but she quickly succumbed to her injuries.
Esparza, the alleged assailant, was found inside the building shortly afterward and booked at San Francisco County Jail on charges of murder and resisting arrest, as well as illegal entry into an emergency area. The final charge had initially been listed as "elder abuse," but the department issued a correction early Saturday afternoon.
While Esparza has been apprehended, SFPD Homicide Detail considers the case to be an open investigation.
The victim's name was not released. This is at least San Francisco's 18th homicide of the year.
Additionally, as Vaswani tweeted, the case was unrelated to the death on Thursday of a 15-year-old near the intersection of Eddy and Scott streets in the Western Addition.
The block of Duboce Avenue where the killing occurred is a residential street on the N-Judah streetcar line, just west of where trains descend into the tunnel en route to Downtown. It is also around the block from a Safeway on Market Street whose parking lot was the scene of another fatal stabbing in October 2022 as well as a February 2022 shooting incident that injured an 85-year-old woman who was eating in a nearby restaurant.
This story has been updated to reflect SFPD's amended charges against Esparza.
Astrid Kane can be reached at [email protected]
