Sonya Faith Warren, 49, was wild, unfiltered, smart and caring, loved ones say.
This story is part of The Dallas Morning News' homicide project focused on sharing the stories of all people killed in Dallas in 2024.
Boxes were packed and there was money down on a new condo. Sonya Faith Warren knew selling the family home would be tough on her, but she had done tough before.
Why This Story MattersThe Dallas Morning News is telling the stories of people killed in homicides in 2024 to show the toll of violent crime in Dallas. Reporting throughout the year will probe what officials are doing to address a crime that claimed at least 246 lives last year.Advertisement
Tough was moving between relatives in East Texas, Dallas, and Oklahoma as a kid. Tough was being on her own at 16. Tough was finishing high school and putting herself through technical college. Tough was losing her husband, the love of her life, four years earlier -- especially after all the work to make the old East Dallas house their own. But funds were running low without him and she needed to downsize.
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So yes, she did tough, said her best friend Sandra Meredith, but she also did fun, love, care and friendship like no one else.
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Warren, who went by her middle name, was shot July 5, according to court records. She was 49. Dallas Police and Dallas Fire-Rescue found her dead in her home the next day after receiving a request for a welfare check. After examining security video and cellphone records, police obtained an arrest warrant for Faith's former tenant, Jeffrey Charles Hinton. A grand jury indicted him on a murder charge; he remains in the Dallas County jail and the case is pending.
Sandra doesn't say Hinton's name, doesn't want to talk much about him, except to point out that Faith had shown him friendship, too. A month or so before she died, she had forgiven the rent he couldn't pay for the apartment at the back of her house, and asked him to move out so she could show the property. Faith's friends don't know, Sandra said, why he came back.
AdvertisementSelf-taught
Faith studied psychology in college and taught herself how to build websites so she could pay for tuition, according to her LinkedIn profile. Her efforts paid off with an almost 30-year career in the tech industry.
Fittingly, Sandra said, Faith met her husband, James Avery, online.
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"Soul mates," Sandra said. "He got her, and she got him, and they were perfect together. Of all my friends' marriages, that's the best one I've ever seen."
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And despite -- or maybe because of -- her challenges growing up, she was devoted to others. Faith and her husband belonged to Bikers Against Child Abuse, a group of motorcycle riders who advocate for abused children.
"They both never had kids," said Cameron Fuller, a friend who met Faith's husband through work. "But they were very defensive of children and very protective of children."
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Faith took it upon herself to find dates for her husband's best man, Brian Czajkowski, and gave her stamp of approval for the woman he married. Czajkowski said he and his wife, who live in Mineral Wells, were planning on coming to Dallas this year to take Faith to Terilli's Restaurant and Bar on Greenville Ave., where they had bought a personalized brick to honor Faith's husband.
James, who had heart disease, Sandra said, collapsed and died on the couple's kitchen floor in July 2020.
Faith struggled after James died, Sandra said, and had trouble holding on to jobs. But this year, she was coming around and ready for the next phase of her life. Selling the house was the first step.
No filter
Faith was wild, Sandra said, a perfect balance to her own reserve.
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She loved Halloween and in 2007, did such a good Marie Antoinette that a Dallas Morning News photographer saw fit to snap her picture.
There were times when the cuss words flew.
"She reared herself from the time she was 16, so she didn't have anybody telling her, 'Hey, that's not how you do things'," Sandra said. "She just didn't have any filters. She was just the real thing, wide out in the open."
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So are the stories, Sandra said.
One of Faith's three miniature Pinschers, Rose, was diabetic and she would wake up at 6 every morning to give the dog her medication. Then there was the "puppy" she found behind a dumpster that she kept even though it turned out to be half wolf.
Don't forget the 700-gallon saltwater fish tank she and her husband kept at a previous house near Casa Linda, part of their exotic fish business that also included massive tanks in the garage. The electric bills were so high, Sandra said, the police came over to make sure nothing illegal was going on.
And then there was the time Faith hand-fed abandoned baby eagles with a golf-club cover that looked like a grown bird. After they were released into the wild, she could call them back with her laugh.
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Even before she met Sandra 20 years ago, Faith made a bracelet for the best friend she wanted but didn't yet have. It's too big to wear, but it's hanging on the wall in the kitchen nook at Sandra's house.
"I miss her so much," Sandra said. "I guess I will forever."
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