The fatal fire killed Renita Hawthorne after prosecutors said gasoline was poured at her home’s entry points.
GALVESTON, Texas — A gas can seen on surveillance video became a key piece of evidence against Courtney Allen Thompson Jr., who was convicted of capital murder in a Galveston arson that killed Renita Hawthorne in 2024.
Prosecutors built the case by linking several records that appeared in different places: threats sent before the fire, video from a gas station, surveillance near the home, fire marshal findings at the burned stairs and testimony about what Thompson allegedly said in jail. The jury’s May 4 verdict gave those pieces a single conclusion. Thompson intentionally set a deadly fire at a home on 39th Street, and Hawthorne, 55, died after smoke and flames trapped her inside.
The state’s timeline started before firefighters arrived. Hawthorne’s son had been receiving threats tied to an unpaid drug debt, according to testimony and court records described in reports. He said Xavier Faison, also known as Saccathon, had threatened him and his mother. One message said, “See y’all ready to play.” Another asked whether his mother drove a truck with a busted window. Faison was not charged in the arson, and public reports do not describe a conviction against him in the case. Prosecutors used the messages to show a debt dispute had moved from words about the son to threats involving his family and home.
Investigators next traced movement before the fire. Cellphone evidence and a traffic stop helped lead detectives to a gas station on 53rd Street. There, surveillance video showed Thompson and another man buying and filling a gas can hours before the blaze. That video did not stand alone. Prosecutors paired it with later footage from near the victim’s home, where a black vehicle was seen moving around the neighborhood. The vehicle stopped, and two men approached the house. One carried a gas can. Afterward, video showed the men running from the area without the can. Flames appeared at the home shortly after the men left.
The physical evidence at the home explained why prosecutors treated the fire as a murder. Galveston fire and police crews were called to the 700 block of 39th Street on Feb. 29, 2024. The home also was identified as 715 39th Street, near Avenue H. Four people were inside. Firefighters broke a bedroom window and pulled out three people, including two children. Hawthorne remained trapped. Officials later said she died from carbon monoxide poisoning and thermal injuries. A fire marshal determined that flames had been intentionally set on both sets of outside stairs. An arson dog detected accelerant there, a finding that fit the state’s claim that gasoline had been used to block the exits.
Prosecutors said the placement of the fire was the heart of Thompson’s intent. It was not enough, they argued, to say the house burned because someone tried to scare or warn the people inside. Adam Poole, chief of the felony division for the Galveston County District Attorney’s Office, said in closing arguments that the person who set fire to each door created a trap. Poole compared the act to building a tomb and then setting it on fire. That argument made the doors, stairs and escape routes as important to the case as the identity evidence that placed Thompson near the gas can and the home.
The jury also heard testimony from a jailhouse informant. The informant said Thompson admitted setting the fire and said it was done in retaliation for the unpaid drug debt. According to the testimony described in public reports, the informant came forward because Thompson was bragging about killing an innocent woman. Informant testimony often depends on credibility judgments by jurors, but prosecutors used it as one part of a larger case. They did not ask jurors to rely only on what the informant said. They connected that account to the threats, the gas station video, the neighborhood surveillance, the arson dog alert and the fire marshal’s conclusion.
The state also pointed to social media. Prosecutors said Faison bragged about the fire in a video posted to Instagram, saying he was ready to burn down all of Galveston and hoped Hawthorne was dead. Poole also referred to one of Thompson’s Instagram posts in arguing that Thompson treated Hawthorne as a stack of cash he could balance in his head and show off. Public reports did not quote a full defense answer to each social media claim. The jury’s verdict showed it accepted the state’s broader theory that the fire was tied to the debt dispute and that Thompson was one of the men who carried it out.
The trial began April 27, 2026, in Galveston County. Jurors began deliberating in the early afternoon May 1 and then recessed for the weekend. They returned May 4 with a guilty verdict on the capital murder charge. The conviction produced an automatic life sentence without the possibility of parole. Thompson had been arrested in Houston on March 12, 2024, after investigators identified him as a suspect. The gap between the arrest and verdict was filled by the slow work of preparing evidence from video systems, phone records, fire investigation reports and witness testimony for trial.
Hawthorne was not described by prosecutors as the person who owed the debt. Her son was identified as the person threatened, and he was not home when the fire started. That fact shaped how prosecutors told the story to jurors. They said the fire was aimed at enforcing a debt but killed a woman who was inside the home instead. The three survivors reached safety only after firefighters created a way out through a bedroom window. The prosecution’s evidence showed the ordinary exits were part of the attack, not an accidental barrier created after the fire spread.
The conviction left prosecutors with a completed capital murder case built from video, fire-scene findings and witness testimony. Thompson’s sentence is life without parole, and the evidence trail that led jurors to him now forms the public record of Hawthorne’s death.
Author note: Last updated May 26, 2026.