Florida man accused of setting apartment building on fire and watching it burn

A man set fire to an apartment building and watched it become engulfed in flames Thursday morning, police said.

Randy Jones Jr., 30, told a Brevard County sheriff’s deputy he started the fire at 1004 Counts St., according to an arrest report. The deputy saw the smoke and flames while driving by the three-unit complex at 8:49 a.m., and called for fire-rescue.

All 22 people inside the building — including 18 children having a slumber party — escaped unharmed. The unit, however, was completely destroyed, and two neighboring units suffered severe damage.

“I lost my phone, my blanket, my shoes, my covers,” said Ariel Chapman, one of the kids, in an interview with Spectrum News 13. “Everything in there is burned.”

“I was trying to make sure all of them got out, pushing them out the door, just to forget about everything, because it was in flames,” Taffy Daniels, the aunt of the party’s host, told Spectrum News.

Doris Gary, a witness, told WESH 2 that Jones is mentally ill.

The arrest report said that the fire was caused by “common combustibles.” Jones used a lighter to start the fire, a Cocoa police spokeswoman said.

One resident who lived in a neighboring building told police that Jones knocked on her door and told her to see that he had set the apartments on fire, and she called 911, according to the arrest report. Jones told his brother that he thought the fire was small and had attempted to put it out, but was unsuccessful, the report said.

Jones has set off fires in the apartment building before, the arrest report said. On Jan. 31, someone made a 911 call reporting that he had lit a small fire contained to a soup pot.

Records show that Jones has three felony charges and three felony convictions, including cocaine possession, sale of cocaine and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Jones was charged with three counts of arson to an occupied structure, a first-degree felony, according to police. He is being held in the Brevard County Detention Center without bond and is set to appear in court on Friday.

This story was originally published August 8, 2019 at 5:58 PM.