UPDATE | Court date set for man arrested for alleged arson in Rolling Bay house fire
Published 4:36 pm Thursday, March 8, 2012
A court date has been set for the man that police believe set the fire that burned down a waterfront home in Rolling Bay.
Police arrested Benjamin M. Padgett, 23, at approximately 3:30 p.m. March 1, nearly five hours after firefighters responded to the fire on Rolling Bay Walk.
Padgett was charged in Kitsap County Superior Court on March 2 on one count of second-degree burglary.
Padgett has a court date set for March 15 and another for March 29. His bail has been set at $75,000.
He was not charged with arson, prosecutors said, because it was unclear whether the fire was intentionally set.
The Bainbridge Island Police Department report includes Padgett’s account of what happened, though he offered two conflicting stories.
In one account, Padgett said he knocked over a candle, starting the fire that he was unable to extinguish.
He also told police of another man staying in the vacant home. Padgett said he awoke to the fire and no sign of this other man. Before he fled, he tried to put the fire out but couldn’t, he said.
Padgett told police he didn’t want to give up information on the other possible individual because he wasn’t a “snitch.”
Upon arriving at the scene of the fire, police encountered a local woman who told them she felt her boyfriend, later identified as Padgett, might have set the blaze. She said she had been a squatter with Padgett in the vacant home in Rolling Bay.
According to the police report, Padgett left the woman a threatening note at her mother’s home on the evening before the fire. The note mentioned that he would “burn the place.” Police took the note into evidence.
Witnesses who first saw the smoke coming from the vacant home gave police a description matching Padgett’s appearance, and they said they noticed someone wearing a black coat and dark pants quickly walking away from the burning waterfront house.
Witnesses also said that they had seen the same man hanging around the vacant home in the days prior to the fire.
After checking Padgett’s common hangouts on the island, police were able to track him down Thursday afternoon.
He admitted to staying in the vacant home, according to police, and was booked into the Kitsap County Jail.
