Thread: California police kill man they say was suspected arsonist

http://www.yahoo.com/_ylh=X3oDMTFkNDU0d ... -/s/716834

California police kill man they say was suspected arsonist

Wow! Thanks for the info. I doubt seriously the man would have reacted as he did had he not had something to hide. He's probably not the only arsonist they will discover either.

California fire focus turns to arson suspects and blazes to the south

Police in San Bernardino County shoot and kill a man they say was acting suspiciously; another is in custody after allegedly setting a blaze elsewhere in the county. A fifth evacuee has died.

By Hector Becerra, Tami Abdollah and Andrew Blankstein, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
3:49 PM PDT, October 24, 2007

In the fourth day of Southern California's massive battle with wildfires, officials welcomed better weather and shifted their attention to arson investigations and still-threatening blazes in Orange and San Diego counties. One man, who police said was acting suspiciously in brush near Cal State San Bernardino, was shot and killed. Another was arrested after allegedly setting a quickly extinguished fire in Hesperia.

In Riverside County, officials said investigators had determined that the 411-acre Rosa blaze in Temecula was intentionally set. Authorities had already said that a nearly 20,000-acre fire in Orange County was set by an arsonist, and today investigators from the FBI and county agencies were gathered near the intersection of Santiago Canyon and Silverado Canyon Roads.

"It's definitely arson and it's been deemed a crime scene," said Jim Amormino, spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department.

The seven-county toll of destruction continued to rise, with more than 1,300 homes -- and more than 1,800 structures -- reported lost. More than 437,000 acres -- an area equivalent to nearly three-quarters of all Orange County -- had burned by early afternoon. More than 352,000 households had been ordered evacuated at some point since Sunday, in the largest such effort in state history.

In San Diego County, a fifth evacuee died; he had been moved from a nursing home.

With winds diminishing, optimism was cautiously growing. Evacuees were leaving Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego as authorities allowed them to return to some neighborhoods.

"We've definitely turned the corner in the city," San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders said this morning.

For some, the abating fires posed confusing choices about when to return home. At Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, Jeff Jones and his family spent the night in a tent after being evacuated from Rancho Bernardo. He had being calling neighbors today to see whether it was safe to return. Finally, he said, "To heck with this place. It's nice, but I want to go home."

The greatest hope came from weather reports predicting that the most extreme Santa Ana winds -- peaking at 60 to 80 mph in recent days -- would largely disappear. By Thursday, temperatures were expected to drop as much as 15 degrees in some places, and the severely dry humidity, which also fueled the fires, should ease.

"The high-pressure system is going to move far enough to the east where it will turn off the Santa Ana spigot," said Bill Patzert, a climatologist for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada-Flintridge. "Up to now, the firefighters have been trying to just stay in front of these fires, doing the best they can. But they'll really be able to fight back against these fires by this weekend."

The tally of losses was far from complete, but in San Diego County alone damages were expected to exceed $1 billion, said Ron Lane, the county's director of emergency services.

Even as the worst of the fires subsided in some areas, new concerns about flare-ups, arson, looting and the adequacy of the government response to the disaster were emerging:

* Interstate 5 and Amtrak rail service near Camp Pendleton were closed for a time today after flames jumped the freeway. Firefighters battling a blaze at the base set backfires to stop the flames, only to have winds shift and push the front across the freeway. In Orange County, the 19,200-acre Santiago fire was pushing west into the dry fuel of the Cleveland National Forest. Officials feared that the return of normal onshore winds could drive the fire toward Lake Elsinore and residential areas of Riverside County.

* Officials were searching for an arsonist responsible for the Santiago fire. In San Bernardino County, a suspected arsonist was shot and killed by police Tuesday night. The shooting was under investigation, but the man was spotted in a brushy area behind Cal State San Bernardino, officials said. After a vehicle pursuit on a dirt road, the man rammed a police car before being fired on by officers, officials said. "There was no reason for him to be back there," said Lt. Scott Patterson of the San Bernardino Police Department.

A few hours later, in Hesperia in San Bernardino County, John Alfred Rund, 48, was arrested on suspicion of arson after he was spotted squatted near a roadside. Rund had started a small fire that was quickly put out, officials said. He was apprehended after he took off on a motorcycle, they said.

* After several arrests for looting in San Diego County, officials were stepping up patrols in other evacuated residential areas. The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department was enforcing a dusk-to-dawn curfew and patrolling for possible looters in areas affected by the fire near Lake Arrowhead and Crestline.

* The San Diego County medical examiner's office today reported a fifth death of an evacuee. James Sharp, 64, a resident of San Diego Hospice in Carlsbad, died Tuesday, one day after being evacuated from his nursing home to Alvarado Hospital. After he arrived at the hospital, his condition rapidly deteriorated, said Rick Poggemeyer, operations administrator at the medical examiner's office. Sharp had suffered multiple fractures of his cervical spine after a fall Oct. 12. The cause of death is pending.

* Six undocumented Mexican immigrants were arrested today by U.S. Border Patrol agents at Qualcomm Stadium, after a report that they were stealing food and water meant for evacuees, Border Patrol spokesman Damon Foreman said. San Diego police responded to a call about alleged theft from the evacuation center and encountered six people in a van who didn't speak English and didn't have California driver's licenses, Foreman said. The police officers called the Border Patrol, and its agents arrived at the stadium and made the arrests, he said. Border Patrol agents are not looking for illegal immigrants at the center but will continue responding to police calls for assistance.

* More questions were emerging about the government response to the fires, many from those on the front lines. President Bush planned to visit Thursday, and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was dispatched to California.

"We're not getting a lot of new resources ... not nearly what we need," Coronado Fire Chief Kim Raddatz said today.

Orange County Fire Authority Chief Chip Prather expressed a similar frustration Tuesday: "If we had more air resources, we would have been able to control this fire," he said, referring to the Santiago blaze. "Instead we've been stuck in this initial attack mode on the ground where we hopscotch through neighborhoods as best we can trying to control things."

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger dismissed the criticism this morning when questioned by an ABC News reporter. He praised the rapid deployment of fire crews and equipment across a region from north of Los Angeles to the Mexican border.

"Anyone that is complaining about the planes just wants to complain, because there's a bunch of nonsense," he said in the broadcast interview. "The fact is that we could have all the planes in the world here -- we have 90 aircraft here and six that we got especially from the federal government -- and they can't fly because of the wind situation."

hector.becerra@latimes.com

tami.abdollah@latimes.com

andrew.blankstein@latimes.com

I live in southern california in Otay Mesa, I came home and was told to evacuate because some kids at San Ysidro high school set a fire that burned 40 acres which ended up being semi close to my apartment complex and a housing complex next to a bunch of newer condos. I don't know the whole story just that some kids had set the fire on monday morning plus with the fire near the tecate border and the winds we were told to evacuate and the air quality was terrible. I stayed at my mom's where the air quality was better and just got back today as I have two kids who didn't need to be breathing in all those ashes. It really makes me mad knowing that people did this intentionally, I had to pack my life in to my car along with my animals thinking a fire was coming our way and it's just ridiculous to have been put through this unecessarily. I feel so bad for those who lost their homes, who lost everything but glad that so far only one person has died because it could of been a lot worse.