A 40-year-old Los Angeles man was arrested and charged with arson on Thursday, Jan.8, after lighting a fire in an alley that was reaching heights of up to 15 feet.
Officers of the Santa Monica Police Department were on patrol in the 1400 block of Second Court at 2:20 am when they chanced upon a man dancing around a wooden stool that had been placed in the middle of the alley.
The man had placed piles of cardboard on top of the stool and had lit the cardboard.
The officers immediately extinguished the flames with their fire extinguisher and then spoke with the suspect, asking him what he had been doing.
The man stated that he had been attempting to keep warm, but the officers could tell that there was no means by which this man could have put the flames out, and that the flames had been dangerously close to a nearby structure.
Bail was set at $500.
Editor’s Note: These reports are part of a regular police coverage series entitled “Alert Police Blotter” (APB), which injects some minor editorial into certain police activities in Santa Monica. Not all of The Mirror’s coverage of incidents involving police are portrayed in this manner. More serious crimes and police-related activities are regularly reported without editorial in the pages of the Santa Monica Mirror and its website, smmirror.com.
