ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, July 18, 1996 TAG: 9607180061
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
MEMO: ***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on July 19, 1996.
An article and headline in Thursday's paper about a series of arsons
in Southwest Roanoke listed the wrong neighborhood. The fires occurred
in the West End neighborhood.
Playing with fire put Phillip Orren in prison.
Orren, 21, was convicted Wednesday of setting fire to six homes and buildings - all but one of them unoccupied at the time - in a series of arsons that frightened residents of the East End neighborhood of Southwest Roanoke. He was sentenced to six years in prison.
As Orren wandered the streets around his Patterson Avenue home, authorities said, he lit matches and tossed them at random, ignited paper airplanes and sailed them through the air, and burned letters that he wrote but never sent to his ex-wife.
Orren, who suffers from emotional problems and was drinking heavily at the time, never intended for his small fires to spread, his lawyer said.
"He played with matches like a kid," Assistant Public Defender Gretchen Knoblauch said. "It's my opinion that he was not a serial arsonist who was going to burn down all of Southwest Roanoke."
But on the night of Jan. 23, one of the fires damaged a Patterson Avenue home while a man slept inside.
"The horror of it is with houses as close together as they are in that part of the city, it was a huge potential danger," Chief Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Betty Jo Anthony said. "We're lucky in this case that only one life was threatened."
After being approached by police investigating the Jan. 23 fire, Orren confessed to setting at least six fires in the area, according to R.S. Kahl, a detective with the Roanoke Police Department.
Although Orren told police that he set some of the fires accidentally, he never told authorities how they started after remaining at the scene to watch firefighters extinguish the blazes, Kahl said.
As part of a plea agreement reached Wednesday in Roanoke Circuit Court, Orren pleaded no contest to six charges of arson. Two other charges were dropped, and Orren was sentenced 35 years in prison with all but six suspended.
He will have to serve at least 85 percent of his sentence and will be on probation for 10 years after that.
The most serious fire damaged a house on the 800 block of Patterson Avenue while James Glass slept inside. Glass, who awoke to find the back porch of his home on fire, was not injured. The fire caused about $10,000 in damage.
Orren, who did not testify Wednesday, was charged with setting fires from Nov. 21, 1995 to Jan. 23, 1996. Most of the blazes damaged vacant homes on Patterson Avenue, Campbell Avenue and 12th Street Southwest.
A spree of about 15 fires in the area had police working overtime and residents worrying about when and where the next would hit.
Since Orren was arrested, Kahl said, there has been just one suspicious fire in the area.
LENGTH: Medium: 61 linesby CNB