Patrons and a bartender at a Fayette County tavern tipped police to a Springfield Township man later accused of committing eight arsons that caused nearly a half-million dollars in damage.
Robert Franklin Ray Jr., 25, of Mt. Tabor Road, is charged by state police at Uniontown with 14 counts of arson and related offenses.
The fires spanned a three-month period beginning in December, targeting vacant mobile homes and four businesses with customers and employees inside. No one was hurt, but police reported damage totaled $435,200.
Ray was still at the scene of at least one of the fires at a Dunbar Township tavern last week when police arrived to investigate, according to a witness.
Donna Wisnewski, bartender at Ye Olde Inn on Monarch Road, said Ray was at the bar Thursday about 10:45 p.m., taking in a performance by an acoustic band, when another patron discovered smoldering materials inside the stall of the men's room.
Other customers pointed to Ray when she asked if anyone had noticed anything suspicious, Wisnewski said.
She said Ray denied involvement when confronted. Wisnewski said when state police Trooper Bill Large came in, she pointed Ray out to him.
"I said that guy was in there at the time," she said.
Large, a state police fire marshal, declined to comment yesterday on how Ray was linked to the arsons because investigations into other fires are ongoing. But on Monday, during an interview with state police, Ray admitted to setting the fire at Ye Olde Inn, according to a police affidavit.
During that interview, Ray admitted setting seven other fires, according to police affidavits, including two at vacant mobile homes in Bullskin and Springfield townships and another at a Dollar Tree store in North Union Township.
Two other businesses, a Dollar General Store on Route 119 North in Bullskin Township and a BFS Foods convenience store on Memorial Boulevard, Dunbar Township, were each targeted twice.
According to the affidavits, Ray started small fires at BFS Foods on Feb. 8 and Feb. 14. Police affidavits indicate both fires were started sometime between 7 a.m. and 3 p.m., but provided no other details.
Lisa Smarto, an employee of BFS Foods, said the fires were in the men's restroom. In the first one, she said, paper materials were lit and stuffed inside a hole in the wall. The second time, she said, toilet paper was set on fire. Both fires were discovered quickly and caused minimal damage, she said. Smoke alarms have since been installed inside the restrooms, she said.
On the same day of the Feb. 8 fire at BFS, police allege Ray also set a fire at the Dollar General Store in Bullskin Township. The 5 p.m. blaze caused $400,000 in damage, far surpassing the $20,000 in damage the same store sustained during a Dec. 12 fire that Ray also is accused of setting.
Efforts to contact Ray's family yesterday were unsuccessful. No one answered the door of a mobile home along Mt.Tabor Road, in Springfield Township, where Ray has lived with his mother, Bonnie, for years.
Ray's grandmother, Ida Snyder, lives approximately a mile from Ray's residence in a mobile home on Hawkins Hollow Road. No one there answered the door yesterday. Another relative, a great-aunt who was contacted by phone, said Ray's family did not wish to comment.
One of Ray's neighbors along the winding, single-lane road, Nancy Tissue, expressed surprise at learning Ray, a 1999 Connellsville High School graduate, had been arrested in the string of fires.
"Oh, my. Bobby Ray Jr.⢠That's scary. He lives right here," Tissue said.
One of the fires Ray is accused of setting occurred at 5:54 p.m. Jan. 12 at a mobile home owned by Tissue's aunt, Velma Williams, also of Mt. Tabor Road.
"There's been a number of fires along this road at vacant mobile homes. Thank God no one has been hurt or worse," Tissue said.
"I never heard of him (Ray) being in any kind of trouble before," she said. "That's why this is all such a shock."
Tissue recalled how Ray, as a child, would visit with her family.
"I always thought he was a very nice boy," Tissue said. "He usually kept to himself and his family, but you'd always see him walking by himself down to his grandmother's mobile home down in Hawkins Hollow."
According to Ray's 1999 high school yearbook, he did not participate in any extracurricular activities as a student. Tissue said she believed that Ray is unemployed.
Records at the Fayette County Courthouse and area district justice offices indicate that Ray did not have any previous criminal history in the county.
Ray apparently is not a suspect in a string of more than 20 still-unsolved arsons in nearby Connellsville between October 2003 and April 2005. In January, a jury convicted Harry J. Collins of four counts of arson and two counts of risking a catastrophe in connection with two small fires he was convicted of setting near his home.
City police, along with agents of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, jointly investigated the Connellsville cases.
"After state police arrested Ray, they were kind enough to contact us about our (unsolved) cases and they questioned him. He denied involvement in any of ours, and there is no evidence at this point linking him to any of them," said Connellsville police Chief Steve Cooper.
"That's not to say we've completely closed the books on the possibility, but at this point it doesn't look like it," Cooper said.
Collins, 58, a mentally retarded handyman, was sentenced Feb. 9 to serve four to 20 years in a state prison for the arsons in Connellsville. Collins was transferred to Camp Hill, in Cumberland County, from the county jail in Uniontown in the last week to serve the remainder of his sentence.
