Nation: Police say arsonist blames personalities for starting fires

AP ^ | March 30, 2002 | AP

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

Nation: Police say arsonist blames personalities for starting fires

The Associated Press

HANOVER, Pa. (March 30, 2002 7:11 p.m. EST) - A volunteer firefighter charged in seven arsons in York County told police he has multiple personalities, one of which he blamed for starting fires that he would later help put out, police said.

Justin Yongue, 20, faces more than 39 felony charges in connection with arsons in the southern Pennsylvania county from Oct. 4 to Jan. 29.

All the fires were in Penn and West Manheim townships, about 30 miles south of Harrisburg. No one was injured in the series of mostly small fires Yongue set in basements, sheds and barns, police said.

Police Detective Diane Hugo said in a preliminary hearing Thursday that Yongue wrote a confession that told about an alternate personality named Samantha who he said set the fires.

"The next night at Pleasant Hill, she parked in the woods, walked to the barn, walked in the barn, lit straw on fire on the right side of the door," Hugo read from the confession. "It was dark out. Walked back to the car. She drove away to McDonald's. Had a Sprite and nuggets. Justin drove to the fire company from McDonald's."

The total damage from the seven fires was more than $1 million, police said.

Yongue's defense attorney, Brian Strong, said Yongue does not remember the confessions and will plead innocent to the charges in a hearing scheduled for April 26.

"I do not believe they can prove their case," Strong said.

Police became suspicious of Yongue when he responded to fires at the same time the arsons began. Police took him into custody at the scene of a Jan. 29 barn fire.

[AngrySpud]

Multiple personalities ... I guess he ought to be sentenced to multiple 20-year sentences.

[jlogajan]

Wait until the guilty one surfaces, and then zap him.

[john in missouri]

Perhaps they can send the offending personality to jail, and the others can comfort him?

[EggsAckley]

Guess I'm naive; I always believed that firefighters had to go through tests, interviews, training, and such. I have trouble believing that this whack job would not have been discovered during all that. Either, 1) he's making the whole thing up or, 2) that fire department needs to screen their hires a whole lot better.