Teenage suspect charged with arson following fires
A 16-year-old male from Port Orchard was taken into custody Thursday afternoon and charged with arson and residential burglary in connection with two fires that happened around the intersection of SE Lund Avenue and Jackson Avenue SE.
The first fire occurred at Port Orchard Self Storage, at 3282 SE Lund Ave, shortly after 10 p.m. Wednesday. South Kitsap Fire and Rescue responded and controlled the fire at around 2 a.m. Thursday morning, Kitsap County Fire Marshal David Lynam said.
The Kitsap Fire Marshal’s Office and Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office detectives determined the fire to be arson, according to KCSO.
The second fire was set at a home near SE Summer Place and Jackson Avenue SE on Thursday afternoon, the sheriff’s office said. Lynam said the house fire happened when the Fire Marshal’s Office was at the storage facility investigating the storage fire.
“So we wrap up the storage unit. We went over there and investigated that,” Lynam told Kitsap Sun Friday afternoon. “We found that the person that ultimately has been arrested for that entered into the backdoor and they went upstairs, and they lit two fires. They lit fire in two places in that house.”
Teenage suspect taken into custody
Through social media posts made by the teenager after the Summer Place and Jackson Avenue fire, and with information provided by the public, KCSO identified the suspect and took him into custody around 3:30 p.m. Thursday, according to a statement from KCSO.
“Detectives made contact with the teenager at his residence, and he was taken into custody without incident,” the Sheriff’s Office statement said.
He was booked into the Kitsap County Juvenile Detention Facility on Thursday evening. Charges were filed Friday in Kitsap County Superior Court Juvenile Division for a second-degree arson and residential burglary to a home on SE Summer Place, according to court documents.
Storage, house turned back to property owners Friday afternoon
No one was injured in the two incidents, KCSO spokesperson Kevin McCarty said. It was unknown how many storage units were damaged at the Lund Avenue fire. An employee at the self-storage declined to talk about the damage to the facility when contacted Friday.
“It’s highly likely that most of the units out there will have some type of damage either having been directly involved with a fire or just damaged by smoke,” Lynam said, though he didn’t know exactly how many of the units were burned.
The Fire Marshal’s Office turned the scenes of the storage facility and the house back over to the property owners Friday afternoon, Lynam said.
Customers of the storage facility will need to contact the manager on the property to know when they can head to check their items, Lynam said.
“There are some units that, where the roof has collapsed or partially collapsed over them, that we’ve declared to be dangerous buildings and they can’t go into those until at some point when the roof has shored up a little bit,” Lynam said on Friday. “But in most of the areas, they’ll work with the owners and the manager on-site. They can begin to come and look at their stuff.”
Counting both the storage and the house, the two fires could be a loss of $2 million to $5 million, Lynam said.