Frisco police have arrested a man suspected of starting two fires on Monday, one of which escalated into a three-alarm blaze that caused damage to eight homes.
Jonathan Webb, 29, of Austin, was booked in the Denton County jail on charges of arson and deadly conduct late Monday evening after the Fire Marshal’s Office of Frisco linked him to two fires that same day. Webb had initially been brought in for public intoxication and outstanding warrants out of Dallas.
As detailed in a news release from the City of Frisco, the first blaze broke out at a house being built on Memorial Drive at 4:08 p.m. The three-alarm fire significantly impacted the house set alight and a neighboring residence while inducing broken windows, water damage, or fire damage to at least six other homes nearby. There were no casualties apart from one individual who was treated at the scene for smoke inhalation and then released.
A few hours later, another fire was reported in an alley in the 4600 block of Haverford Drive. Both the Frisco Fire Department and Frisco police were deployed to the scene. They found a trash container ablaze, which firefighters quickly snuffed out before any damage could be done to nearby homes or vehicles.
Webb has been issued a total bond amount of $160,000 and remains in custody as of publication. He had allegedly been spotted at the scene of each fire by video surveillance cameras in the earlier incident and by police officers in the latter. The investigation is still ongoing.
In Dallas, suspected arson cases are investigated by the Dallas County Fire Marshal and the Fire Investigation and Explosive Ordnance Division of Dallas Fire-Rescue. A total of 40 arson reports have been logged citywide as of April 25, with the most occurring in Council Member Adam Balzadua’s District 7, which leads the year with nine, per data from the City’s crime analytics dashboard.
Reports of vandalism, destruction, or property damage are much more prevalent in Dallas, with 2,866 incidents clocked so far this year. These crimes are fairly evenly distributed across the city, much like the vagrancy Dallasites have been complaining about to City officials for quite some time. As covered by The Dallas Express, a vagrant allegedly set a fire that spread to an encampment and a big tree that hung over the on-ramp to I-45 in Council Member Paul Ridley’s District 14 last year.
