The man arrested for torching two Teslas within a block of each other in SoMa on the same night in early 2024 was indeed a serial carsonist, as he was just found guilty at trial of also having torched five other cars the week before.

It sure seemed like the work of the same arsonist when two Tesla Model Y cars were set ablaze on the same night the evening of February 24, 2024, both within about a block of each other in SoMa. One of the fires was at Shipley and Fourth streets, the other at Mabini and Bonifacio streets, and the suspect was captured on video in the KPIX report below. This was just two weeks after the infamous burning of a Waymo at the Chinatown Lunar New Year celebrations, so it was fair to wonder if all of this was the work of the same serial carsonist.

It was not the same carsonist, but a different serial carsonist who burned the two Waymos. DA Brooke Jenkins’s office announced Friday afternoon that 63-year-old Armando Salvador was found guilty of torching the two Teslas. But he was not just a Tesla torcher, because as prosecutors proved at trial, he also set fire to six other non-Tesla cars in a single night just one week before.

“According to the testimony and evidence presented at trial, on the evening of February 18, 2024, at approximately six am, Mr. Salvador, beginning at Campton Place, lit a Cadillac Escalade on fire then set fire to five additional vehicles located on Geary Street and O’Farrell Street,” Jenkins’s office said in their Friday press release.

Salvador was found guilty of eight counts of arson of another person's property, and two counts of unlawfully causing a fire.

The Chronicle’s March report on Salvador’s arrest noted that “during the arrest, officers also seized suspected methamphetamine from Salvador.” But there are no  drug charges listed in Jenkins’s press release. So maybe he beat the rap on that one, maybe it wasn't actually meth, or maybe his attorney or public defender was just able to plead that charge out.

Salvador’s sentencing is currently scheduled for October 27, 2025.

Related: SFPD Suspects An Arsonist Is Targeting Teslas After Two Catch on Fire in SoMa [SFist]

Image via Citizen App

We may have another carsonist on our hands, or else the same individual who set fire to two Teslas in SoMa in February is back at it.

There was a spate of fires on San Francisco streets early Sunday morning, and as KRON4 reports, four cars were torched in separate incidents.

It's not clear if one car was involved in each incident, but both debris and vehicles were apparently set ablaze in four separate incidents Sunday: on the 400 block of Jones Street near Eddy, in the area of Haight Street and Octavia Boulevard, on the 1300 Block of Market Street, and in the area of Van Ness Avenue and Hickory Street.

Police did not disclose how close together in time each of these alleged arson incidents occurred, but they appear connected.

Car arsons were not so common in the city the last ten years or so. But then came the Waymo set on fire in Chinatown in February, and the two Teslas that were torched later that month.

Earlier this month we learned that a 14-year-old boy is being charged in connection with the Waymo arson.

A prolific carsonist was at work in the Castro neighborhood a decade back — the culprit was determined to be a well known character in the neighborhood connected to a murder case who was later arrested, and was released from jail in 2016.

More recently, neighbors in Hayes Valley near Octavia Boulevard have been complaining about encampment fires on side streets since last summer, and both a four-alarm blaze at a building under construction in August and a tent fire in October had a neighborhood group raising alarm bells with the city.

One particular encampment at the time, at Octavia and Hickory, was blamed for several fires on the street.

"We don’t know exactly how all of these fires started, but we do know how dangerous they are to our community," said Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association President Jennifer Laska in a letter to the city last August.

Anyone with information about this past weekend's fires is asked to call SFPD investigators at 415-553-0123.

Previously: Are the Waymo and Tesla Arsonists the Same Person?

Photo: Matt Hearne

The SFPD has reportedly made an arrest in connection with the arson of an autonomous Waymo taxi in Chinatown last month, and they say the suspect is linked to other vehicle arson cases.

It's been a while since San Francisco had a prolific carsonist about town, but there could be one in our midst again — or, at least, the SFPD says they have such a suspect in custody.

The department released surveillance footage last week of a suspect lighting a parked Tesla on fire in SF's SoMa district on February 24, one of two that was torched that same night.

And now, as the SF Standard confirms with police, they have a suspect in custody connected with the Waymo car set on fire amid Lunar New Year celebrations in Chinatown two weeks earlier.

We don't yet have a suspect name, but police reportedly said that they arrested a man on February 27 near Union Square who was suspected of lighting "several" cars on fire. The suspect also allegedly had methamphetamine on his person at the time of the arrest.

The SFPD has not yet linked the Waymo arson with the two Teslas set on fire, but the media was already making that connection last week, including the LA Times, and SFGate.

Two days after the Chinatown Waymo incident, Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin told reporters that the SFPD already had "promising leads" on suspects in the case, though we did not hear anything further in the weeks that followed.

The Tesla fires occurred within a block of each other on February 24. The arsonist was caught on video putting some paper on top of the tire of a parked Model Y near the intersection of Shipley and Fourth streets, and then lighting it, and the car subsequently went up in flames.

The other fire occurred shortly before that near Bonafacio and Mabini streets — alleyways between Third and Fourth streets, south of Folsom.

Previously: Waymo Self-Driving Vehicle Vandalized, Set on Fire in San Francisco Chinatown Saturday Night

Photo via SFFD

After four cars were set ablaze on New Year’s Eve in Bernal Heights, yet another car was lit on fire some five blocks away on Tuesday night, though in this case the described arsonist had actually lit a disposed Christmas tree on the curb.

It certainly caused some anxiety in Bernal Heights when four cars were lit on fire the night of New Year’s Eve, on Park Street near Holly Park. And then not even ten days later, another car was set on fire in Bernal Heights, reportedly just five blocks from the New Year's Eve fires, at San Jose and 30th streets.

This time, the suspect lit a disposed Christmas tree on the curb, and the first spread to an adjacent vehicle. While there is no proven connection between the two incidents, the Bernal Heights neighborhood is obviously worried that there’s a serial arsonist at work.

The news of the second car fire incident popped up on a Facebook Bernal Heights group. “Our car was burned last night at 11 PM,” the purported car owner posted Wednesday. “Our neighbor has video- they lit a curbed Xmas tree on fire and walked away. Thankfully no one was hurt, and it did not spread to the nearby tree.”

The post also has doorbell camera video of the incident, in which a possible suspect can be seen.

The SF Fire Department acknowledges this did all happen as described. "We can confirm that on that evening, we did respond to a car fire at that specific location," department Captain Jonathan Baxter told KTVU. "As to the Christmas tree being a contributing factor to that fire or not, is still under investigation."

KTVU adds that the fire department is “exploring potential connections” between the fire incidents, though it’s yet unproven whether they’re related. There are currently no reported suspects or arrests with either incident.

That station also adds that there’s a GoFundMe for the car owners of the vehicles that were burned on New Year’s Eve.  

Related: Arsonist Torched Four Cars in Bernal Heights on New Year’s Eve, Reportedly Tried to Burn House Too [SFist

Image: Bernalwood:Discussion via Facebook

A fifth car fire in less than a week has struck the Castro/Dolores Heights neighborhood, this time at Hartford and 18th Streets. The first report of the fire came at 3 a.m. Sunday, as Bay City News reports, at 126-132 Hartford Street. Police are not saying that there's a connection to a series of four similar car fires in the neighborhood on Wednesday, but, obviously: similarities.

A neighbor tells NBC Bay Area, "It's definitely unnerving. The Castro is a relatively safe neighborhood and just to see that someone would do that..."

The fires on Wednesday all happened within two hours of each other, between 4 and 6 a.m., in the vicinity of Church Street and Liberty Hill.

Going back to mid-November, Sunday's fire actually marks the eighth such incident in the Castro in just over a month. Three cars were set on fire early in the morning on November 19th, also parked next to each other on Noe Street between 18th and 19th.

The San Francisco Fire Department is stumped by the case so far but the arson unit is on it, knocking on doors and tracking down any surveillance footage they can.

In related news, local bartender Ryan Salvo, whose car was one of those torched on Wednesday, has launched a crowdfunding campaign to replace his beloved, 12-year-old Jeep Wrangler, which he'd named Roxy. He says his insurance won't be covering the loss.

So it looks like we have another serial carsonist on our hands. Does everyone remember the East Bay carsonist of 2009?

Previously: SFFD, SFPD Stumped By Second Outbreak Of Torched Cars In Past Month

Remember Anthony Bejerano, the man the SFPD nabbed back in June for allegedly setting more than a dozen small fires around SoMa and the Mission, including one in the parking garage at One Rincon Hill that totaled someone's Mercedes? Well, he went to trial for the Mercedes fire, and the Public Defender's Office today announced that Bejerano was acquitted. In Bejerano's defense they argued that the sole eyewitness identification at the parking garage, made by a valet, was "made in a highly suggestive manner — based on a single photo instead of a lineup and at the behest of the valet’s boss while he was surrounded by police officers."

Defense attorney Chris Hite also noted that Bejerano has been a regular volunteer at Project Open Hand, had no previous criminal record, and faced up to 10 years in state prison if he was convicted.

Police released multiple images of a man identified as the primary arson suspect back in June, following weeks of tension over what appeared to be a serial arsonist whose fires were getting larger and more brazen. A convenience store owner subsequently fingered Bejerano, who was a regular customer, and then ABC 7 tracked down a former roommate of Bejerano who claimed Bejerano had once threatened to kill him, though he never pressed charges.

Police believed Bejerano was responsible for setting small blazes at a couple of construction sites in SoMa, as well as some dumpster and newspaper box fires in the Mission and SoMa, all of which occurred within a couple weeks of each other.

It's unclear if he'll face any further charges besides the Mercedes torching.

Two car fires broke out under some suspicious circumstances in Golden Gate Park on Saturday night — and both vehicles have connections to the city's Rec and Parks Department. The first vehicle, a Honda belonging to a Rec and Parks employee, was spotted on fire around 8:30 Saturday night behind the bandshell at the Music Concourse in the park. About an hour later, a marked Rec and Parks truck reportedly "went up in a ball of flames" after an officer witnessed an explosion that lifted the vehicle in to the air.

Fire investigators are currently looking for a connection between the two incidents — aside from the obvious question of "Who is trying to blow up Rec and Parks employees?", that is. As if that weren't enough to stoke our ever-mounting paranoia, there was also a car fire in the Mission Friday night. That one started in a driveway on South Van Ness around 8:15 p.m. and spread to part of the home's exterior, but firefighters had it under control in under ten minutes.

We're not quite ready to declare that the toilet torcher/carsonist who lit up the city back in 2009 has returned for another high-octane Spring, but it's pretty weird to see three cars go up in flames in a weekend, right? Is this the work of Psycho-sexual fire fetishists? Is there some kind of Irish Republican Army out there immobilizing the RPD for their crimes against the city's clover patches?

If you happen to know, you're encouraged to call the SFPD's anonymous tipline at (415) 575-4444 or via text message to TIP411.

[ABC7]
[BCN/Appeal]

A car in Merced Heights was set aflame by a well-tossed molotov cocktail last night. The flaming bottle was not, as one might expect, part of any sort of political protest. Instead, the incendiary device was was the work of a 40-something perpetrator who sped off in a waiting vehicle.

No arrests have been made yet, but the vehicle belonged to a 22-year-old owner. We like to think this whole thing happened because the kids these days just don't understand how punk rock works anymore.

[SFEx]

Bucking conventional wisdom about how crime rises as incomes fall and unemployment rises, the FBI's latest report on nationwide crime statistics for 2009 shows an overall decline in both violent and non-violent crime. In the West, there was an overall 8% decline in the murder rate, a 4% decline in burglaries, and a 17.5% decline in auto theft over 2008 figures. As you may recall, our own city's murder rate was sliced in half, from 98 in 2008 to 45.

Of note, there was a 12% decline in arsons statewide, but do to the voluntary nature of the reporting of these statistics by local municipalities, we have to wonder whether the carsonist or the toilet torcher were included in San Francisco's total of 198.

We're receiving word that the porta-potty arsonist otherwise known as the Toilet Torcher (or a copycat) lit another porta-potty on fire last night around 10:20 p.m. in the Laurel Heights neighborhood, near Presidio Ave. and Clay Street. This is the first we've heard from him/her since mid-November, but consider yourselves warned.

A car fire in the city of Richmond last night is, presumably, related to the other car fires sweeping the East Bay. KTVU reports: :Units responded to reports of a vehicle fire in the area of Clinton Street and Ventura Avenue at around 3:15 a.m. and arrived to find a 1993 BMW on fire, Richmond police said." No arrests were made; no injuries were reported.

More vehicles were set ablaze in the recent string of car fire hitting the Bay Area. BCN reports, "The fires were reported at around 2:15 a.m. in the 2100 block of Vale Road near San Pablo Avenue, where two vehicles appear to have been set ablaze at the same location." No injuries were reported; no arrests. Over 20 cars have been torched in the last month.

Two vehicles had to be extinguished by firefighters this morning in the city's South of Market District. According to Appeal/BCN, "Units responded to Jessie and Sixth streets at around 5:15 a.m. to a report of a vehicle fire ... Two vehicles were found burned at the same location."

Chilling.

Speaking of which, some authorities claim that the recent spat of car fires in the city of Richmond and El Sobrante might be "psycho-sexually" driven.

"The psycho-sexual aspect of arson crimes really mirrors the psycho-sexual aspect of other sexual crimes. There’s an excitement phase and a plateau,” Richmond Police Detective Steve Harris explained. "And the reason arsonists tend to commit crimes when doing it for a psycho-sexual reason is that it allows them to regain control where they would otherwise feel powerless."

Harris has complied an arson list, one that works similar to the Megan's Law list, the database for registered sexual offenders.

Detective Harris claims that there's a "sense of euphoria" the arsonists feel after flicking their bics. "The excitement that leads to a plateau of euphoria when they're able to regain control. They're able to set all these things in motion and then able to stand back and watch what happens."