An Ogden man is in jail, accused of setting a house on fire, illegally shooting a gun in that house and assaulting three police officers as they were arresting him.
According to a probable cause statement released Friday, the man, 42, was found by police Wednesday night outside of the garage of the house on Harrison Boulevard in Ogden. Fire crews had been dispatched there to battle a blaze in the house, which fire investigators said started in two different places and “was not from natural causes,” police said.
When police arrived, according to the statement, the man tried to run back into the house. Officers followed him, telling him he was under arrest. The man then started to run upstairs. Officers tried to take him into custody and, the probable cause statement says, he kicked two officers down the stairs and spit on a third.
Police say a search of the house turned up unspent casings on the first floor, a bullet hole in the living room window, more bullet holes in a mattress in the master bedroom, and a phone on the grass with what police believe were three more bullet holes. The fire started, investigators said, in the mattress and in the basement — and police said they found a blowtorch outside the basement door.
No one else was in the house at the time, police said.
The man is being charged with one count of aggravated arson, a first-degree felony; discharge of a firearm within a habitable structure, a third-degree felony; three counts of assaulting a police officer, a class A misdemeanor; and one count of interference with a police officer, a class C misdemeanor.
The arson count carries a potential prison sentence of five years to life.
A Second District judge in Ogden on Friday ordered the man held without bail in the Weber County jail.
