KEY POINTS:
The new year has started with hundreds of arrests, a murder, a hit and run, two suspicious fires and the accidental shooting of a 13-year-old who is fighting for his life in Wellington.
More than 300 people were arrested around the country during New Year's celebrations, mostly at hotspots such as Whangamata, Mt Maunganui, Queenstown, Wanaka and Nelson.
Worst was Whangamata where 165 people were arrested after several fights in a park near the surf club, breaches of liquor bans and general disorder.
One person was also arrested after three people were stabbed in an incident at a park. The injuries were not life threatening.
At Mt Maunganui, where 100 people were arrested, Inspector Karl Wright-St Clair said the level of aggression was higher than in previous years and there were reports of police being pelted with bottles.
He said about 19 people were due in court yesterday on a range of offences.
Bay of Plenty staff were also kept busy with a hit and run which occurred in Mt Maunganui at 4.20am while a 16-year-old girl was walking along Marine Parade.
Police say the girl was left on the road with serious injuries. The car was found parked in a nearby side street. Police were still interviewing its occupants and it was too early to say what charges they might face.
The girl was in a critical condition in hospital.
Waikato police were called to the first homicide of the year after 23-year-old Gareth Pehina Te Huia was stabbed to death in Kawhia early yesterday morning. A 41-year-old man has been charged with murder.
In Wellington a 13-year-old boy is fighting for his life after being shot in the head with an air rifle while playing with a friend in Cheltenham, northeast of Feilding at 2.30pm on New Year's Eve.
Feilding Detective Chris Payne said the pellet entered through the boy's eye socket, missing his eye, and lodged in his brain. It would be two or three days before doctors knew if he would live.
On New Year's Eve Counties Manukau crime squad attended an arson at Nga Iwi School in Mangere, which caused extensive damage to a stand-alone building.
In Palmerston North police are investigating a suspicious fire at Ozanam House - a home for cancer patients - which caught fire at 5am yesterday. No patients were in the wing at the time the fire started.
In the South Island, a man, 31, appeared in the Christchurch District Court in a special New Year's Day sitting. He was charged with two counts of sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection, abduction and assault with a weapon after an attack on another man in his home on Saturday night.
