Another gem from The Smoking Gun
Cops: Billy Joel Song Was Arson Soundtrack
The song “We Didn’t Start the Fire” was blasting from inside a Minnesota building that was set ablaze by the landlord, according to police who say the accused arsonist cued up the Billy Joel single while torching the property with his tenants inside.
Investigators allege that Travis Carlson, 37, burned a Duluth duplex last Thursday morning, using gasoline extracted from his car as an accelerant. Carlson, who is being held in the county jail on$75,000 bail, has been charged with arson in the first degree, a felony carrying a maximum 20-year prison sentence.
As detailed in a probable cause statement, Duluth Police Department officers were dispatched to the duplex around 4 AM following a 911 call. When first responders arrived, “they saw the upstairs apartment in flames with ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ blaring from the upstairs apartment."
Carlson, who purchased the building in 2005, lives upstairs and rents out the downstairs space in the property, which was built in 1901.
The downstairs tenant told cops that he was awoken by the sounds of Carlson “smashing glass and breaking things” inside the upstairs unit. A neighbor reported seeing Carlson “wearing a helmet and smashing his own windows” around 3:30 AM. The witness added that he saw Carlson “under his truck with gas cans, going in and out of the house” before seeing “a flash like a fireball come from the upstairs apartment.”
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