Report: Suspect in LA arson seen on surveillance video
Staff
Los Angeles city firefighters battle a massive fire at a seven-story downtown apartment complex under construction in Los Angeles, Dec. 8, 2014. The fire was determined to be arson. The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday, March 31, 2015, that a suspect was captured on surveillance tape reviewed by authorities. (REUTERS/Gene Blevins/file)
Los Angeles city firefighters battle a massive fire at a seven-story downtown apartment complex under construction in Los Angeles, Dec. 8, 2014. The fire was determined to be arson. The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday, March 31, 2015, that a suspect was captured on surveillance tape reviewed by authorities. (REUTERS/Gene Blevins)
Los Angeles city firefighters battle a massive fire at a seven-story downtown apartment complex under construction in Los Angeles, Dec. 8, 2014. The fire was determined to be arson. The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday, March 31, 2015, that a suspect was captured on surveillance tape reviewed by authorities. (REUTERS/Gene Blevins)
Crews work on freeway signs that were damaged by a large fire that consumed an apartment building that was under construction in Los Angeles, Dec. 8, 2014. The fire was determined to be arson. The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday, March 31, 2015, that a suspect was captured on surveillance tape reviewed by authorities. (REUTERS/Jonathan Alcorn)
Firefighters stand on lanes of the 110 freeway near smoldering hot spots of a large fire that consumed an apartment building that was under construction in Los Angeles, Dec. 8, 2014. The fire was determined to be arson. The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday, March 31, 2015, that a suspect was captured on surveillance tape reviewed by authorities. (REUTERS/Jonathan Alcorn)
Fire crews work on smoldering hot spots of a large fire that consumed an apartment building that was under construction in Los Angeles, Dec. 8, 2014. The fire was determined to be arson. The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday, March 31, 2015, that a suspect was captured on surveillance tape reviewed by authorities. (REUTERS/Jonathan Alcorn)
A suspect who sparked a massive arson fire last year that gutted a multistory apartment complex under construction in Los Angeles was captured on surveillance tape reviewed by authorities, the Los Angeles Times reported on Monday.
The video showed the suspect parking a car on the 110 Freeway before walking into the building with “cans of fuel,” the paper said, based on a recording of a community meeting last week addressed by Los Angeles Fire Department Battalion Chief Steve Ruda.
The suspect “torched that building up from the freeway side and then escaped,” Ruda told the roughly two dozen people at Echo Park’s neighborhood council meeting, the Times reported.
Reuters could not independently verify the report.
Fire department representatives could not be immediately reached for comment. But department spokesman Peter Sanders told the Times in an email, “To protect the integrity of the investigation, I can neither confirm nor deny what Chief Ruda said last week.”
Inspectors have interviewed more than 100 people about the blaze, which caused damages of up to $30 million when it engulfed the scaffolding of a seven-story luxury apartment complex.
The conflagration erupted in the early morning hours of Dec. 8 and quickly destroyed the construction site. Firefighters located next door opened the doors of the fire station to find the entire block engulfed in flames.
The intense heat ignited three floors of an adjacent office high-rise, blowing out its windows and those of two more. No one was injured.
Investigators said in January they had discovered accelerant in the building’s ruins, evidence that the fire was arson.
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