Prosecutors have filed felony charges against three young adults accused of lighting fires at an East Anchorage park and in a nearby vacant home in 2013.
Breanna Marie Black and Daryl Jerome Felix Mobley, both 22, and Waylon Tyler Snider, 20, have been charged with second-degree arson, malicious or wanton setting of fire on forested lands and misdemeanor criminal trespass, according to an information affidavit filed March 5 in District Court.
The affidavit also outlines the involvement of an unnamed juvenile in the August 2013 fires.
On Aug. 8, 2013, a 911 call about a residential fire brought Anchorage police officers to the 5000 block of Fifth Avenue. In the neighborhood, they found an unoccupied home with fire damage. Some small flames were still burning in and around the home, according to the court record.
"A strip of burnt grass led away from the residence and appeared to trail where the accelerant was used as a fuse to light the building," the record says. Officers reported that the area smelled of gas.
A witness told police he saw four people walking down the street just before the fire started. As an officer approached the crime scene, he spotted the group and tried to talk to them. Two suspects ran away but were quickly caught by other officers in the area, the affidavit says.
Police reported that Snider, Mobley and the juvenile, identified by the initials MS, smelled "strongly" of gasoline. Two of the suspects had lighters in their pockets, the record says.
Black, who initially told police the group wasn't carrying gas cans but backtracked when challenged with witness statements, handed over her phone to police, the record says.
Prosecutors allege Black's cellphone contained photos of the group burning small fires in a vacant structure on Taku Drive.
The phone also contained photos of the same group setting fire to trees in nearby Russian Jack Springs Park, according to prosecutors. Anchorage Fire Department investigator Brian Balega identified the photos as fires that were set on the night of Aug. 5, 2013, three days earlier.
The fire department reported around that time it suspected arson at the park as recent rains ruled out natural fires. The large park was the site of 16 suspicious fires in three days, KTUU reported.
AFD said Balega was on leave and unavailable for comment Wednesday.
During an interview with Balega, the juvenile said the group "started the fires at Russian Jack Park with dry leaves and dead branches, then ran out of the woods when the fires started getting big," the court document says.
Deputy district attorney Clint Campion said multiple forensic tests -- including a latent fingerprint analysis -- and reports had been completed since the alleged arsons.
"We began receiving some of those results in 2014, and we were in communication with the police and fire departments" around the time of the defendants' arrests, Campion said.
Prosecutors received the last of the reports in early March and felt they had enough evidence to file charges, he said.
All three adult defendants have prior criminal convictions, prosecutors said. Arraignments in the case are set for late March and early April.