Trial-setting reset once again for man charged in 2017 fire-bombing spree
Matthew S. Jones, declared mentally competent, to return to Department 9 Friday.
A trial date once again remains pending for a 44-year-old Fairfield man who was declared mentally competent last year and has been charged with two counts of attempted murder in connection to alleged firebombings and a hate crime in 2017.
Matthew Scott Jones, who was scheduled to appear Monday in Department 9 for a readiness conference and a trial setting, will return for the same matters at 8:30 a.m. Friday in Judge Carlos R. Gutierrez’s courtroom in the Justice Center in Fairfield.
Besides the attempted murder charges, Jones also faces charges of causing an explosion with intent to murder; arson of an inhabited structure; three counts of using an explosive device to destroy property; and possession of a destructive device in a public place.
Court records indicate that at 10 p.m. on April 27, 2017, Fairfield police officers responded to a fire at the Woodsong Village Apartments on North Texas Street. Upon investigation, the officers determined a homemade explosive device had been thrown through the window of an occupied apartment there.
Both victims were able to escape the apartment; however, the explosive device caused “substantial damage” to the apartment, Solano County District Attorney Krishna Abrams said in the prepared statement at the time. Police records also indicate that Jones had been using racial slurs toward his neighbors in the apartment complex.
About 30 minutes later, Fairfield officers responded to a report of a vehicle fire on Thames Court. During the investigation, they determined a homemade explosive device had been thrown through the window of a parked vehicle.
On the following morning, at about 1 a.m., there was another explosion in front of the Fairfield Police Department. During that investigation, it was later determined that a homemade explosive device had been thrown toward the department entrance at 1000 Webster St.
At 10 a.m. that same morning, the officers found a fourth homemade explosive device at the Nexeo chemical plant on Crocker Circle.
With the help of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, investigators were able to determine that Jones was responsible for all four incidents and he was later arrested and booked into Solano County Jail in Fairfield, where he remains without bail.
For a time, Jones was deemed mentally incompetent. The case was removed from control of the Solano County Superior Court in May 2019. Jones was committed to a state hospital on May 30, 2019, for a maximum of two years, court records show. He was deemed mentally competent to stand trial on Sept. 1, 2020, and Gutierrez reinstated criminal proceedings on Sept. 18.
Jones’ case was previously suspended on March 12, 2018, and, three days later, Gutierrez appointed a doctor to examine the defendant and to determine his mental competency to stand trial and the need to administer antipsychotic drugs.
Criminal proceedings were reinstated on Dec. 5, 2018, the same day a confidential verdict was delivered, according to court records. A jury had found Jones competent to stand trial.
Arguments by Deputy District Attorney Mary Nguyen appeared to have swayed the panel of eight men and four women, with her advising that the defendant was “able to articulate” to FBI and Fairfield police investigators why he did what he allegedly did.
During the trial, Deputy Public Defender Sara Johnson said that Jones suffers from schizoaffective disorder, a hybrid mental condition that includes schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression. She said her client suffers from delusions, claiming Jones’ alleged violent acts were essentially symptomatic of someone experiencing the same “fixed delusions,” that attorneys and the community at large were persecuting him.