Police say alleged Auburn arsonist an “admitted drug user” whose alleged drug use drove him to set fires
Published 6:26 pm Friday, January 15, 2016
Auburn Police say the man they arrested Thursday on suspicion of setting at least 18 fires in Auburn since September is “an admitted drug user,” whose drug use “makes him feel invincible, causing him to set structure fires.”
So Auburn Police wrote in their Certification for Determination of Probable Cause, filed Friday with the King County Prosecutor’s Office
According to Dan Donohoe, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, the suspect was not in court Friday. The court made a probable cause finding and set bail at $350,000. The matter was set over for Saturday’s first appearance calendar in courtroom 1 at the King County Jail.
The Auburn Reporter will withhold the man’s name until he is formally charged.
Police arrested the man in cooperation with the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), the FBI, the Valley Regional Fire Authority and other agencies and brought him into custody shortly before 2 p.m. Thursday, hours after the reporting of two more north-end fires that had broken out within 15 minutes of each other.
No one was injured in the latest fires, which damaged a boat and an occupied home.
Between October and November, 11 residential structures were intentionally set, according to VRFA reports. Non-structural fires were also intentionally set along the Interurban Trail or involved Dumpsters and flags. All told, 25 suspicious fires were reported and investigated throughout Auburn during the arson spree, police said.
All of the affected structures were clustered on the north end of the city, where the suspect lives. Most of the fires were set between 6 and 11 p.m., and appeared to be random, investigators concluded. Nobody was hurt, but in some cases structures sustained significant damage.
Auburn Police Cmdr. Mike Hirman said Thursday afternoon that the suspect had left an identifiable fingerprint on an automobile following a Nov. 19 fire that damaged a home and surrounding property. According to police, a warrant was written and served on Dec. 2 to begin collecting location data of the man’s cellphone.
At 2 a.m. on Jan. 14, having received the report of the two fires, a police officer reviewing the location data learned that the suspect’s phone placed him at both fire scenes even before they had been reported to the VRFA or to Auburn Police.
During the interview after his arrest, according to police, the man admitted to having set numerous other fires spanning Sept. 19 and Jan. 14.
The man’s rap sheet includes past charges of second-degree burglary, possession of a stolen vehicle, assault and harassment.
