The San Francisco District Attorney's Office has charged a 22-year-old man with 11 felonies after allegedly setting his girlfriend on fire over a dispute about who would carry the laundry.
“The acts of this defendant are despicable and he will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” District Attorney George Gascón said in a statement on Thursday. “The cycle of domestic violence must end. This case illustrates how domestic violence is never an isolated incident but rather a pattern of physical and emotional abuse that increases in severity.”
Dexter Oliver now faces charges that include attempted murder, aggravated mayhem and torture. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. He is currently on misdemeanor probation for violating a court order from a domestic violence incident on October 2011. His bail was set at $10 million. Attempts to reach Oliver's attorney were not immediately successful.
The charges stem from Jan. 6, when court documents allege Oliver threw flammable liquid on his 25-year-old girlfriend - Starr Lamare - and set her on fire, sending her to the hospital with life-threatening burns, which have rendered her unrecognizable.
Officers were called about noon to Hollister Avenue between Jennings Street and Ingalls Street near the Bayview district on reports of a woman screaming. When they arrived, they found that she had been severely burned.
Prosecutors revealed this week that the couple had an argument over who would carry the laundry. Lamare had asked Oliver to carry the dirty clothes to the laundromat a few blocks away, and documents allege that Oliver refused. Lamare went to the laundromat anyway.
While she was there, prosecutors said that Oliver grabbed two empty bottles of Pedia-Sure - a nutritional drink for children - and filled them with gasoline. He went to the laundromat, the documents indicate, threw the gas on her and set her on fire.
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Those court allegations coincide with what Lamare's sister told NBC Bay Area immediately after the horrific crime.
"She said he had to get out and they were over," Lamare's sister, Precious Craig previously told NBC Bay Area. "And she left the laundromat and ten minutes later, she was burned."
Family members said that Lamare and Oliver had been dating for six months and had a rocky relationship. Relatives also said that the couple was returning from the laundromat down the street, when Lamare told Oliver she wanted to break it up. Oliver allegedly returned home to get some gasoline, relatives and police said. The family had never before mentioned the incident about who would carry the dirty laundry.
