Paroled man now facing charges after burning his girlfriend
Dexter and his girlfriend have an argument. He’s 22; she’s 25. She has three children. She and Dexter have some kind of relationship. She says, help me take the laundry to the Laundromat. He says, no. She gets the laundry to the Laundromat. He gets two bottles of Pedialyte and fills them with gasoline.
Pedialyte is a treatment for dehydration in small children and comes in liter-sized plastic bottles.
If this is what happened, Dexter goes to the Laundromat a few blocks away. He has time to cool. He has time to burn off. But no, he’d rather have his rage, so he finds his girlfriend, spews fuel in her face and lights her on fire.
She runs toward home, burning, screaming. She’s found on the corner of Hollister, a treeless street in the Bayview District, just down from St. Paul of the Shipwreck Church.
Dexter runs away and it takes police a few days to find him.
In the hospital her face is nearly unrecognizable.
This happens on Sunday January 6th, the Christian Day of the Epiphany, the day when the divinity of Christ is always revealed.
You hear this kind of story and you always think of Charles Rothenberg who set his six-year-old son on fire in an Orange County motel in 1983. Rothenberg wanted to murder the boy to punish his wife. He also runs away from the crime scene, then gets 13 years, serves seven, and eventually whiffs a third strike, and in 2007 gets 25 to life.
Dexter Oliver had a history of domestic violence before his arrest
Dexter Oliver faces 11 felonies with additional domestic violence enhancements. Charges include attempted murder, aggravated mayhem, torture, battery with serious bodily injury, assault with a deadly weapon-not a firearm, assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury, assault with intent to commit a felony, assault with caustic chemicals, arson causing great bodily injury, domestic violence, possession or manufacture of combustible material or incendiary device.
Attempted murder, aggravated mayhem and torture each carry a maximum sentence of life in prison. If found guilty, a judge might find it in his gavel to issue several life terms.
Oliver was already on misdemeanor probation for violating a court order from a domestic violence incident on October 2011. At arraignment, he pled not guilty. His grandmother told the press it was not the boy she knew, and as far she was concerned it was as though the boy grew up in church. The judge put bail at $10 million.
“We are very concerned for her well being,” says DA spokesperson Alex Bastian, referring to the victim. “She’s had numerous surgeries but she’s on the road to recovery.”
Read More:
SFGate: Suspect in SF torching of woman arrested
KGO-TV: Police arrest man accused of setting woman on fire
KTVU: Authorities arrest suspect in brutal SF fire attack
