DUBLIN — A Hayward man is set to be formally sentenced next week for killing a 67-year-old neighbor in a 2022 stabbing with no clear motive.
Chad Williams, 27, pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter with a knife enhancement in exchange for dropped murder charges and a 12-year prison term. Williams remains in custody at Santa Rita Jail and will be formally sentenced on Dec. 20, according to court records.
Williams will get credit for the two years he has spent behind bars since being arrested for the July 24, 2022 killing of Thomas Boyd. Police at the time said that Williams’ girlfriend told them Williams was having a “mental breakdown.” He and Boyd lived in the same Hayward apartment complex on the 24000 block of Amador Street but didn’t know each other, authorities said. Boyd was found stabbed to death near the complex’s pool.
At the time, Williams was on probation for assault, though the underlying charges in the prior case involved allegations that he and three others sexually assaulted a group of teens at a get-together in Berkeley. Originally charged with oral copulation of minors in concert, the group was eventually allowed to plead no contest to assault charges in exchange for jail terms followed by probation.
In the sexual assault case, which was filed in 2018, Williams allegedly admitted that two girls, aged 15 and 16, had orally copulated him, but denied knowledge of a firearm at the scene. The girls told police that one of the suspects took out a firearm and that the group proceeded to beat, rob and sexually assault the five teens inside a Berkeley apartment.