Arson set at occupied home in Warren

Staff report

WARREN

A woman living at 409 Logan St. NE says she’s grateful she was still awake when someone apparently started a fire on her front porch at 1 a.m. Thursday.

The woman, 32, was on the telephone, talking to her father, when she smelled gas and went downstairs to see flames on the front porch.

She woke two children who were sleeping on the living room floor, then called 911. Two other children were upstairs above the porch. Their ages are 5, 7, 15 and 18.

“If I hadn’t been awake, the whole house would have caught on fire,” she said when contacted by The Vindicator later Thursday. “I caught it early.”

She said she had the children go to the back of the house away from the fire and rescued two small dogs while her daughter, 15, and a family friend, 18, attended to the younger boys.

Two Warren police officers arrived first, one of them calling out to the residents of the house from the front door, the other one going to the back door to help everyone outside and put them in police cruisers because of the cold air outside.

Ken Nussle, Warren fire chief, said the fire was intentionally set, and investigators with his department are investigating. The fire caused about $200 damage to the front door, but the fire department extinguished it soon after arriving. No one was injured.

Investigators are checking into allegations by the mother that she had been threatened earlier by one or more males.

“That is a serious crime when you set fire to someone’s porch in a house that is occupied,” Nussle said.

Police and fire officials believe some kind of fuel was used to start the fire.