Guilty plea for setting girlfriend ablaze in ’ 13
27- year prison sentence for dispute over laundry
A San Francisco man who set his girlfriend on fire nearly four years ago in an apparent dispute over laundry pleaded guilty to attempted murder Thursday and will be sentenced to 27 years in prison.
Dexter Oliver, 27, was charged in San Francisco Superior Court with arson and domestic violence after police said he doused his girlfriend, Starr Lamare, with gasoline from baby food bottles and set her on fire during a Jan. 6, 2013, arguraised that began when Oliver refused to help Lamare carry clothes to a coin- operated laundry in the Bayview district, prosecutors said.
Lamare, who suffered lifethreatening burns to her upper face and body, declined to appear in court Thursday for Oliver’s plea.
“She’s doing OK,” prosecutor Sam Totah said outside court. “She’s ... strong. Very resilient.”
Oliver will be sentenced Jan. 4.
His proposed prison term was lengthened because of enhancements that involved causing great bodily injury and prior robbery convictions out of San Mateo County in 2009. As part of his plea, he must abide with an order to stay away from Lamare when he is released.
“By pleading guilty, he is, in fact, incriminating himself,” Oliver’s attorney, Michael Gaines, told the court.
Oliver has three previous convictions related to domestic violence involving two women, prosecutors said.
Oliver’s grandmother Lajuana Ceaser and great- grandment mother Nora Ceaser acknowledged outside the courtroom that Oliver had temper problems throughout his life and said they wish he’d gotten more help.
They said they wanted him to serve less prison time.
“That’s my baby in there. It hurts me,” Nora Ceaser said. “I him.”
Oliver and Lamare had known each other for eight years but had started dating six months before the incident, Lamare’s sister, Precious Craig, told The Chronicle at the time of the attack.
Lamare had tried to break up with him after a previous domestic violence incident, Craig said, but Oliver, described as domineering and controlling, “talked his way back in.”