San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Accelerant cited in fire that killed 5
Claim in San Marcos case is tied to a lawsuit going to trial soon
Someone used an accelerant to ignite the fast-moving fire that killed five young adults at a San Marcos apartment building in 2018, according to pretrial testimony in a civil lawsuit about the rental property’s safety conditions.
The inferno erupted at the Iconic Village Apartments near Texas State University at 4:27 a.m. on July 20, 2018, while most residents were asleep. Criminal investigators long ago determined someone intentionally set the fire, but no arrests have been made.
At a trial scheduled to begin next month, lawyers representing 13 survivors and the parents of one of those killed will argue that the owner and managers of the complex, among other defendants, bear responsibility for the disaster and should have to pay damages because they allowed unsafe conditions, notably
a lack of fire sprinklers, unreliable smoke detectors and a flawed roof design that fed oxygen to the fire.
More than three years after the catastrophe, the identity and motive of the arsonist remain a mystery. Attorneys for the defendants have tried to implicate a Medina County man in the crime. But the plaintiffs’ attorneys
say there’s no evidence he played any role in the fire and that the defendants are just trying to create a distraction.
The trial will begin in Austin on Nov. 3 before state District Judge Jan Soifer. The proceedings will be held online and broadcast on the court’s YouTube channel because of health risks posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. It is expected to last four weeks.
The catastrophe killed Dru Estes, 20, of San Antonio; Belinda Moats, 21, of Big Wells; James Phillip Miranda, 23, of Mount Pleasant; Haley Michele Frizzell, 19, of San Angelo; and David Angel Ortiz, 21, of Pasadena. All their deaths were ruled homicides.
One survivor, Zachary Sutterfield, now 23, of San Angelo, suffered third-degree burns to nearly 70 percent of his body and a
traumatic brain injury during his escape.
The alleged use of an accelerant surfaced in sworn testimony from William M. Bennett, a real estate investor who manages San Marcos Green Investors, a partnership that owns the Iconic Village Apartments.
“My understanding of why the fire spread quickly was that ... there was accelerant placed on it, and it was hot, dry and windy,” Bennett said under oath during a deposition in January.
Bennett testified that he learned these details by talking to the “fire people” while he was at the apartments after the disaster and by reading “the reports.”
No other records made public so far support Bennett’s assertion that an accelerant was used.
Bennett gave a blunt answer when pressed as to what those suing should be told about the apartments’ safety.
“You can tell them that an arsonist showed up in the middle of the night and killed their children,” he responded. “We had a hundred-percent compliant property . ... There is just no way to know what more we could have done to foresee crime or deal with a fire with accelerants. ... I don’t know what I could have done differently to have prevented this or improved the outcome.”
Bennett was recently dismissed from the case as an individual defendant. Seven individuals and businesses remain as defendants. They include San Marcos Green Investors; Elevate Multifamily, a property management firm; a leasing manager for the apartments; and a roofing company. A few other defendants reached settlements with the plaintiffs.
The parents of one of those killed in the fire — Miranda — are plaintiffs in the current lawsuit. The families of the four other people killed settled their suits against the apartment complex’s owner and managers. Two of those families joined the Sutterfields in filing a separate fire-related suit last year against different defendants.
While the civil litigation grinds on, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives expressed confidence that the criminal case will be solved.
“We are optimistic that the person(s) responsible for this crime will be brought to justice,” ATF Senior Special Agent Nicole Strong said in a recent statement. “ATF continues to investigate every lead . ... Our dedication to bringing justice to the victims remains unwavering.”
‘Persons of interest’
The Iconic Village complex at 222 Ramsay St. consisted of six separate low-rise buildings. An expert for the plaintiffs maintains that the design of Building 500, where the five deaths occurred, contributed to the devastation, according to court documents
recently made public.
Flames spread swiftly through that building, which contained 28 apartments, partly because a pitched metal roof built on top of the pre-existing shingle roof the year before created an attic-type space that lacked fire partitions or compartments.
That open space allowed the fire to become more intense, according to a report by Ofodike Ezekoye, a fire scientist and professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.
“The biggest contributor to the rapid fire growth was the lack of draftstopping in the attic space,” Ezekoye wrote in a March 25 report for the plaintiffs.
“Draftstopping limits the amount of oxygen available to the fire in a given compartment. ... Had draftstopping been installed in the attic space, it is likely that the fire growth would have been contained and allowed more time” for residents to get out, he wrote.
“Because the metal (roof ) was constrained by fasteners, it is likely that the warping around these fasteners introduced openings allowing fresh oxygen to enter the attic space more freely, thus increasing the fire’s heat release rate,” Ezekoye added.
Ezekoye’s findings are among the experts’ reports prepared for the plaintiffs. They show only one side of the legal fight and will be challenged by the defendants, who hired their own experts to investigate the fire. The defense experts’ full reports haven’t yet been publicly disclosed.
The fatal fire started at the southeast quadrant of the victims’ building — an area near an alleyway and another apartment building where the flames eventually spread, according to a report by Michael Chaney, a Houston-area fire expert for the plaintiffs.
Chaney has investigated the origin and cause of over 3,000 fires since 1975. His firm specializes in investigating fatal fires.
Chaney visited the victims’ building twice before it was demolished. His March 22 report noted the apartments in the southeastern corner had been completely consumed by fire, while the doorway framing elsewhere in the building was still standing or somewhat intact.
But the exact location where the fire was set remains undisclosed because criminal investigators couldn’t share their findings, Chaney said.
“The cause of the fire was investigated by the ATF and local fire officials and was found to be ‘incendiary,’ i.e., a fire set by human hand, on purpose, when there should not have been a fire,” Chaney wrote. “Their investigation is criminal in nature and they cannot release the details until the matter is settled.”
The report reveals that a woman in a nearby apartment building on the same property reported seeing “a glow” around 4 a.m. the morning of the fire — nearly 30 minutes before the first report of trouble — and called her boyfriend. The report says she “was told not to worry about it.” It doesn’t say by whom.
When the glow became larger, she called 911 at 4:27 a.m., Chaney wrote. By that point, flames were sweeping through a building full of sleeping tenants.
Chaney’s report also asserts that criminal investigators had developed “two good suspects” in the case as of last year. His report mentions a “domestic dispute” that occurred on the day of the fire at the same building where the victims lived, but it provides no details.
San Marcos Fire Chief Les Stephens said investigators have “persons of interest” in the case, but he declined to confirm or deny whether they have identified any suspects.
Stephens and the city’s former fire marshal, Kelly Kistner, declined to comment on Chaney’s report because the criminal investigation is ongoing.
The ATF wouldn’t comment on Chaney’s report or Bennett’s claims of an accelerant.
‘Drug through the mud’
The Medina County man whom the defendants have tried to implicate in the fire is Ryon Wayne Castro. He is the former boyfriend of a woman seriously injured while escaping the blaze.
Castro, 32, a Natalia-area resident, became ensnared in the legal fight last year after the judge allowed the defendants to name him a “responsible third party” in the lawsuit. An unidentified “John Doe” was also added to the lawsuit with the same designation. A jury could consider whether either of them bear any responsibility for the disaster.
This strategy is commonly known in legal circles as the “empty chair defense” — pointing at someone else to reduce potential liability.
In court filings, the defendants’ attorneys accused Castro and John Doe of “intentionally, maliciously or negligently” causing the fire. The filings included no evidence to support the accusation, but at a court hearing later, defense lawyers argued that Castro’s former girlfriend, Beth Conboy, told others she suspected him of setting the fire.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs, in a motion last week to remove Castro from the case, accused the defense of misleading the judge about Conboy’s testimony.
Conboy, 23, leaped from her second-story bedroom window to escape the flames, suffering fractures to her vertebra, foot and ankle when she hit the ground. She is among the plaintiffs suing the apartments’ owner, managers and other companies.
Now living in the Boston area, Conboy, a singer, testified during a deposition last year that she