Dillon M. House, 18, of Imperial has been charged with felony arson for allegedly starting a fire last week inside an Imperial mobile home while his mother and two of his friends were inside. Fortunately, no one was hurt in the fire, but it destroyed the home at 2232 Cook Road, which is off Old Antonia Road, authorities report.
At 6:22 p.m. Aug. 23, Antonia Fire Protection District got a call about the fire, Chief John Newsome said.
In addition, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office was called to the home at about 7:20 p.m. When deputies arrived, House’s mother told them that her son, who had been in his bedroom, came into the kitchen where she was and asked her for a cigarette and lighter. After she gave the items to him, he went back into his room, said Lt. Gary Higginbotham of the Sheriff’s Office.
House also reportedly “made odd comments” to his mother in the kitchen, Higginbotham said.
Later, House ran out of the mobile home and got a garden hose and tried to extinguish the fire that had started in his bedroom, but with no success.
Once his mother saw flames coming from the bedroom, she alerted her son’s two friends, a male and a female who were in the living room, about the fire and they also tried to extinguish the flames, but couldn’t and left the home, all getting out OK, the probable-cause statement in the case said.
Later, House told deputies that he found a small bottle of gas in the home’s front yard earlier in the day and took it to his bedroom. He said he poured a small amount on a glass-top table in his bedroom and lit it with the lighter his mother gave him. After watching the fire for a short time and “smacking it out” with his hand, he repeated the process a number of times, but eventually, some of the gas spilled off the table and the fire spread and “fully engulfed the bedroom,” the report said.
It took firefighters about 10 minutes to put out the blaze, but the 30-year-old double-wide mobile home was totaled, Newsome said.
“The fire started in a rear bedroom and it gutted the bedroom, a bathroom and the hallway, and it caused heat damage throughout the rest of the home,” he said.
The mobile home was a rental unit, and damage to it was estimated at $60,000. There was another $30,000 in damage to the contents, Newsome said.
The owner of the mobile home told deputies she was renting to House’s mother.
House was arrested for allegedly setting the home on fire, and on Aug. 24, the Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office charged him with first-degree arson, a class B felony punishable by five to 15 years in prison.
He was being held Monday in the Jefferson County Jail on a $100,000 bond.
After the fire was extinguished on Aug. 23, firefighters remained on the scene doing “overhaul and investigation” until about 11 p.m., Newsome said.
He said the state Fire Marshal’s Office, the Jefferson County Arson Team, which is made up of fire investigators from around the county, and the Sheriff’s Office investigated the fire. -- Kim Robertson