In a chilling game of cat-and-mouse that took investigators minutes to identify a suspect and then several tens of additional minutes to extract a confession from him, a southeastern Pennsylvania volunteer firefighter was revealed to have been the mystery arsonist who set a series of small, easily contained blazes that he and his company then responded to shortly thereafter, NBC10 reports.
The shock, twist ending for the fast-paced procedural thriller came when the Pennsylvania State Police Fire Marshal’s office checked the database of license plate readers in the jurisdiction of the Perseverance Fire Company in Montgomery County, about 25 miles north of Philadelphia. Cops were quickly able to piece together that 29 year-old Perseverance member Justin Sholly had driven to and/or away from the sites of the three blazes set and had driven to the station and jumped on a fire truck to help put out at least two of those three, including the climactic, 4:26 AM May 31st inferno that consumed a barn, three vehicles, a shed, an outhouse, and a gazebo in Franconia Township.
That must’ve felt like the penultimate scenes of Backdraft for Sholly when he was riding on the truck to respond, as though Kurt Russell’s grizzled Irish-American Chicago smoke-eater was sitting right across from him with a death stare, having just then pieced together Sholly’s betrayal of everything firefighters lay their lives down for. Bet Sholly even Hans Zimmer’s pensive score puncturing the truck siren’s mournful wails cadences in his head… In reality it was legitimately escalation as Sholly’s first arson in the 30-hour spree was to a pile of wood on the side of a road, and then the second to an unoccupied barn, before the stunning set piece of third that still didn’t really come close to the chemical factory fire in Backdraft. It was also probably Sholly’s ex-girlfriend’s half-brother Brian, bleary-eyed from passing out drunk two hours prior, who was staring at the floor and spilling Gatorade on his pants as they sped toward the early Sunday morning multi-structure/vehicular fire.
Sholly might’ve had an easier time getting away with it had he remembered to travel on foot and/or bicycle to and from the fires he set. Barring that, maybe could’ve just not left a fucking Duraflame log, lighter, and pile of dry wood logs in his car while he was coming under police scrutiny.
The now-suspended volunteer fireman remains in jail as he has been unable to post bail yet.