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Former student at career center found innocent of setting $14M fire
TweetBy Ed Runyan
Patricia Schindler will be sentenced on a misdemeanor offense Aug. 18.
YOUNGSTOWN — Though a state investigator determined the $14 million fire at the Mahoning County Career and Technical Center was set on purpose, evidence presented at trial failed to prove that Pamela Schindler was the person who started it.
That was the decision issued Tuesday by Richard White, the magistrate in Mahoning County Juvenile Court, in finding the 18-year-old Salem-area woman innocent of a felony charge of aggravated arson.
The magistrate did, however, find her guilty of obstructing official business, a misdemeanor.
White will sentence her at 3 p.m. Aug. 18 after the Mahoning County Juvenile Probation Department conducts a predisposition report, a court official said.
Schindler could get up to 90 days in juvenile detention on the conviction.
The fire destroyed one wing of the building, located on Palmyra Road in Canfield, May 4, 2007.
In his decision, White summarized the testimony presented during the one-day trial in the Martin P. Joyce Juvenile Justice Center last month.
He noted that Cody Deal, one of Schindler’s classmates in the multimedia class at the vocational school, testified to seeing Schindler hold a lighter 3 to 4 inches above a bucket of flammable solvent, which then ignited instantly.
But White noted that Deal’s testimony differed drastically from that of other students from the class.
Deal’s testimony had to be weighed against “contradictory evidence” presented by Chuck Hanni, assistant state fire marshal, White said. Hanni said heptane, the chemical contained in the solvent, is three to four times heavier than air and therefore moves downward, not up.
“Mr. Hanni testified that an open flame must come into very close proximity to the liquid to ignite the vapor, as the vapor does not rise,” White wrote.
“Based on the expert testimony, an open flame held as far above the liquid as described by Cody Deal would not ‘instantly’ ignite the vapor,” the decision says.
Deal’s testimony was different from other students’ on what type of bucket the solvent was in, whether rags or sponges were used to clean the table and whether another student touched the bucket after it caught fire.
“The magistrate is mindful of the magnitude of the damage done by this fire. However, the magnitude of the damage does not serve to lessen the burden of proof — a burden clearly not met,” he wrote.
The obstruction charge stemmed from the investigation of Detective Andrew Bodzak of the Canfield Police Department, who interviewed Schindler on May 9, June 11 and July 9 while trying to find out whether she had a lighter with her the day of the fire.
When Bodzak asked Schindler whether she smoked, Schindler said she didn’t anymore. But later she admitted she occasionally did. Schindler also denied having asked a classmate to take her somewhere to buy cigarettes after school on the day of the fire, but she and a classmate later admitted she had done this, White wrote.
The classmate, Kyle Lane, was later convicted of obstructing official business for not being honest about whether he had given a student named Abby Welsh a lighter about 15 minutes before the fire started.
Schindler, 17 at the time of the fire, is from West South Range Road north of Salem. If she had been convicted of the aggravated arson, she could have been placed in a juvenile detention facility until she was 21.
runyan@vindy.com
Comments
What a croc of crap!!! The fire just started all by itself.
The girl lied to the police and had a lighter near the flammable liquid. GUILTY as charged.
Don't you people comprehend what you read? The so-called witness didn't get one detail right about the whole event. No one said the fire started by itself. What about the girl who talked about the liquid being flammable and got a lighter off of another student? Pamela only lied about not smoking. Seems to me the whole investigation was screwed up.
If the Assistant Fire Marshal Chuck Hanni (where have I heard that name before?) was so sure that the vapors could not be ignited with a lighter, why didn't he prove it in the courtroom by holding a bucket of solvent in his lap and waving a lighter over it?
Because they had a video of an independant company doing tests on the solvent. They didn't say they it couldn't be ignited. The lighter would have to come in direct contact with the liquid,which conflicts,like everything else with the witness saying the lighter was held over the bucket. The fumes do not rise on this solvent. A little research on the product tells you that.
GEE......SHE HAS BEEN GUILTY FROM THE BEGINNING, NOW SHE ISN'T? HMMMM.........,INTERESTING, ISN'T IT? WELL, SHE HAS TO LIVE WITH WHAT SHE DID, BUT HER PARENTS AND SHE SHOULD ALSO HAVE TO PAY FOR WHAT SHE DID!
The only ones who said she was guilty, BEFORE her trial was the newspaper and people who think the whole thing was in black and white. The magistrate knows the whole story. Doesn't anyone find it funny that the girl WITH a lighter,named by the other students is not being investigated? Seems the only thing the girl has to live with is being put through the whole ordeal of them trying to prove something the magistrate says is obvious she did not do. She was proven innocent why can't anyone deal with that. Should be more worried about how things are run and investigated around here.
Wow! Some of you people just think you know the whole story, despite not having been involved in the case at all. Does the name Richard Jewel ring a bell with anyone?
Anita, come on now, you can't be that daft. That kind of dangerous experiment would never be allowed in a courtroom.
As far as I can tell, the girl in question lied about going out for a pack of smokes. Not a crime. Is it so hard to believe that the confused witness was making it up to get this girl in trouble? We are dealing with teenagers here.
I meant that smoking is not a crime. Obviously, lying to a police officer IS a crime.
It's nice to see someone took the time to really read the articles and understand them. Thank you for having some common sense about the whole thing. Everyone should listen to George412 or go back and try to understand what you read the first time.
What none of you have mentioned that is so obvious is that in this country we are INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY so you cannot say "gee. . .she was guilty from the beginning." We are supposed to be tried in court, not the press, because as one can see from reading these comments, everyone is far too quick to jump to "guilty" without proper evidence. Guess what? Being accused of a crime or even arrested does not mean you're guilty!
Kudos to you jjj5577! The judgy found the girl innocent. Don't you think she has been through enough in the past year. You should just leave her alone. The prosecution had no evidence and the defense did. No one seems to think of how the fire affected any of these kids.No matter how it started,it was a terrifying day for ALL of them. Thank God no one was seriously injured.