Greensboro man charged after woman is set on fire, critically injured

A woman remained in critical condition after what police described as a gasoline attack and fire on West Gate City Boulevard, a case that forced Greensboro Police, Greensboro Fire and Guilford County EMS into a dangerous early-morning response in one of the city’s busiest corridors.

Andrew Alan Lewis Mathews, 43, of Greensboro, was arrested Monday night and charged with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury, malicious use of incendiary material to injure, and two counts of burning personal property. Police said Mathews also faced unrelated charges and was being held in the Guilford County Jail without bond.

The violence unfolded around 4:11 a.m. on May 13 in the 3700 block of West Gate City Boulevard, where officers, firefighters and paramedics responded to reports of a vehicle fire and a woman with burn injuries. Police said the woman had been doused with gasoline and set on fire before being taken to a local hospital.

The victim’s condition, and the use of gasoline, immediately raised the stakes for investigators. A fire in a commercial stretch of West Gate City Boulevard can threaten nearby vehicles, businesses and first responders, and the presence of multiple agencies at the scene pointed to a rapid, high-risk response rather than a routine assault call. For residents, the immediate questions are whether the attack was isolated, what led up to it, and whether the suspect and victim knew each other.

Police had not publicly released a motive, and the relationship between Mathews and the woman had not been explained in the reporting available. That leaves detectives still working through the sequence of events, including how the fire began, what preceded the attack and why the victim was targeted.

The arrest came nearly a week after the attack, underscoring how seriously investigators were treating the case as they gathered evidence and sorted through the felony charges. On a corridor that many Guilford County residents use for work, shopping and travel across Greensboro, the case has become a sharp reminder of how quickly a domestic or interpersonal assault can spill into a public safety emergency.