While the Alamo Square home of dog walker Terry Williams undergoes renovations after burning down in the spring of 2024, a porta-potty at the site was set on fire around 1 am Saturday. Additionally, the suspect in the case of the racist threats has been missing since the fall of 2024.
As the Chronicle reports, a porta-potty outside the home of local dog walker Terry Williams and his parents, which is still being rebuilt after it was destroyed in a fire a year and a half ago, was set on fire early Saturday morning. The home wasn’t damaged in Saturday’s fire, but its exterior was charred.
As SFist reported in May of 2024, Williams wasn’t home when the original fire broke out in the home, but his elderly parents had to be rescued by firefighters. Williams told KTVU his 76-year-old disabled mother Carolyn almost died in the fire. “To me, it's a miracle that they found me. It scares me sometime,” Carolyn told KTVU.
Per the SF Standard, Carolyn died in January 2025, possibly due to health issues that were exacerbated by injuries sustained in the fire.
A few weeks before the May 2024 fire, per SFist, Williams received racist hate mail, including “a voodoo doll depicting a Black person with a noose around his neck, as well as postcards and other mail containing racist and threatening language.”
On November 6, 2024, the San Francisco Police Department identified the person suspected of the racist threats as April Martin Chartrand, a 67-year-old Black artist and Williams’ neighbor who was reported missing on August 23, 2024, per SFist.
“I was shocked,” Williams told KTVU when he heard who the suspect was. “It's a disgrace to Black people and you're an elder.”
Williams recalled that he had confronted Chartrand about five years previously about leaving broken glass in the street out of concern for neighborhood dogs’ paws, which created lingering hostility between the two, per SFist.
“I’m an animal lover. I don’t want any animals getting hurt,” Williams told KQED.
SFPD is still seeking assistance from the public in locating Chartrand, as they obtained a warrant for her arrest. Contact the SFPD at (415) 575-4444 or text TIP411 and begin the message with “SFPD.”
Williams’s family has two GoFundMe accounts, which became the center of a dispute between Williams and his family following Carolyn’s death, per the Standard.
Image: May 2024 house fire; SFFD
