Francesca Padilla was awakened by the sound of screaming people and breaking glass. Soon she could hear the tortured howls of her neighbor’s dog Togo as the bungalow right next to her Venice home was engulfed in flames.
"It was yelping so loud--the sound isn't the usual dog sound--it was suffering,” another neighbor told a local newspaper. “It was suffering." The homeowner, Dr. Courtney Gillenwater, a pediatrician, was at work when the fire started around 3 a.m. Her neighbors tried and failed to break into her bungalow to rescue Togo. But the Husky-mix ultimately died, and Gillenwater’s home in this Los Angeles neighborhood was destroyed.
Gillenwater suspected that drug addicts from the growing homeless encampment nearby started the April 2021 fire because she had asked city officials to remove a dumpster behind her house where they would congregate.
Her neighbor, Padilla, also believes the homeless were the culprits. “Anyone can see the correlation between homeless encampments and the rise of fires," she said. “We have people cooking drugs out in the open right across the street. Is that not a recipe for disaster?”