Noz Nozawa, a longtime neighbor of Williams’, told The Standard she came out to see what happened after smelling smoke and hearing sirens.
“We don’t know what caused this fire, but I have no doubt that the same perpetrator is responsible for this, and that really scares me,” Nozawa said. “It went from this is stupid and also terrifying and hateful to: They could have murdered people today.”
Sitting in a chair on the sidewalk, Rev. Amos Brown, president of the San Francisco NAACP and pastor at the Third Baptist Church, watched as firefighters broke down the interior of the burned home on Tuesday afternoon.
“If a brother like Terry Williams can be harassed, threatened, intimidated, terrorized with his family in San Francisco, it says that more good people need to come aboard to make it uncomfortable for bad people,” Amos said. “This should be a tipping point in San Francisco.”
No arrests have been made in connection with the racist threats, which police are investigating as hate crimes.
“How are we going to recover from this? How will I recover from this?” Williams said. “I already had enough on my plate already. Now I’ve got this on my plate. I don’t know what to do—I’m going to keep fighting.”
This is a developing story.
