PALM BAY, Fla. -- Palm Bay police said a man arrested Wednesday on suspicion of starting a brush fire will be charged.
Now, Brian Crowder, 31, is in the Brevard County Jail.
"I believe that I accidentally may have started (a fire) by tossing a cigarette out the door. I have a violation of probation. I have no driver’s license. I was driving," said Crowder.
Crowder left the Palm Bay police station and was taken to jail early Thursday morning. Investigators said earlier Wednesday someone noticed him throwing something into the woods just seconds before a small fire broke out.
Police said while Crowder was running away from them, he was trying to start even more fires.
For now, police have charged him with two counts of unlawful burning.
They said he could just be a copycat, but he hasn't been totally cooperative and more charges could follow.
“It's a relief at least we have somebody and he's definitely somebody that needs to be off the street. At least people know we're out there looking and we're not going to tolerate someone even setting a small fire. We're not going to put up with that. They're going to be put in jail,” said Det. Ernie Diebel from the Palm Bay Police Department.
Crowder and his dark-colored car do match the description of someone seen near the fire scenes this weekend.
Crowder told police he does have an alibi for at least some of that time.
This is not Crowder's first run in with the law.
He's got a slew of arrests on his record, including several convictions.
The first dates back to 1997 with convictions for grand theft and drugs.
He was then convicted in 2001 for everything from trespassing to burglary to theft.
He also had later arrests and convictions for burglary and battery.
This is his first arrest though for anything to do with fires.
News 13 went by his mother's home in Brevard County Wednesday. She wasn't there, but a roommate said the whole ordeal has been a tough one to take.
“She’s beyond upset. She's very distraught, and she feels very badly about everything that's happened, especially to all the people who have been affected --- if he is guilty -- but he's just a person of interest right now. But she has no connection to him. She hasn't seen him in 15 years,” said Liz Casper, the roommate.
Crowder has been wanted since October for felony violation of probation for failing to appear in court.
A $15,000 reward has been offered for the capture of the arsonist responsible for the brush fires. Investigators said they have had at least 100 different leads.
Anyone with any information is asked to call CrimeLine at (800) 423-TIPS.
More than 162 homes have been damaged or destroyed as crews work around the clock to contain the burning brush fires. More than 11,000 acres have burned in the Palm Bay/Malabar area so far and more than 13,000 acres have burned across Central Florida.
To make it easy for you to find the latest information about fires in their areas, we have created individual pages for each area affected:
Fire Locations
Fire Updates
A strike team remains in Palm Bay looking for hot spots, but firefighters said they are optimistic about getting the flames from the 8,250-acre fire contained. Fire crews said they had 40 percent of the fires contained by Tuesday night.
In Cocoa, after scorching more than 250 acres Monday, the fire flared up again Tuesday, burning 75 more acres and shutting down I-95. Residents were forced to evacuate their homes and hotel rooms until the fire was back under control.
Firefighters in Malabar say the fire there, which has already burned 3,700 acres has the potential to keep growing. Crews spent Tuesday night closely watching hot spots, including a fire that is moving in the direction of homes at Crepe Myrtle Drive near Berry Drive.
The 800-acre brush fire in northwest Daytona Beach has been confined, and the Division of Forestry said about 55 percent has been contained.
A Melbourne man was arrested after he was seen running into a wooded area with a gas can, but the can turned out to have nothing more dangerous than orange juice.
The incident happened Tuesday, shortly after law enforcement asked neighbors to be vigilant, as they searched for the arsonist responsible for the brush fires in Brevard County.
The alleged sighting at the Northgate Plaza near Aurora and Wickham roads sent police on a massive search for the man with a gas can.
Two people were detained, but police later realized that the gas can people thought they saw was actually a container of orange juice.
Gov. Crist Tours The Damage
The fire fight has gone on so long that Gov. Charlie Crist has issued a state of emergency, and the state Emergency Operations Center geared up to send firefighters into Brevard County to replace crews that have been battling the blaze for more than 36 hours.
Crist got a tour of the fire damage first hand Tuesday. He and other emergency managers from Tallahassee met with firefighters, then toured much of the Space Coast in a helicopter.
The governor said Central Florida would get all the help it needed to fight the fires -- from the state and federal levels.
Crist also took time to praise the firefighters already in Brevard County for their days of hard work.
"Community members, neighbors got together with local law enforcement, grabbed their hoses and stopped the fire, and God bless them," Crist said. "These are difficult situations, and let me make this point: It brings out the best in our fellow Floridians, and it's amazing how they always bind together and work hard, bind together and do what's right, and it makes me enormously proud to be governor of this great state."
Gov. Crist, along with Craig Fugate, director of the state's Department of Emergency Management, urged everyone to stay on alert, since conditions could change at a moment's notice.
At a news conference Tuesday, Crist said FEMA has approved a federal grant to have the funding necessary to continue the firefighting effort and to help reimburse local governments.
Emergency response chief David Halstead said the EOC was coordinating with local and county fire departments to get more equipment and personnel to the fire areas.
"We have partially activated -- not to Level 2 yet, but we have operations, plans -- certainly our fire personnel are activated, and they're working off site, moving resources," Halstead said. "We've moved more than 25 fire engines and about15 wildfire engines from around the state to that impacted area."
Halstead said if the fires get worse over the next couple days, the EOC would ask the federal government for a fire management assistance grant, which will help defer the costs of fighting the fires.
Additional Information
Information is power, so we have collected some information and links to help you keep up with the latest on the brush fires and how to get help:
If you have any pictures of these fires, please e-mail them to special@cfnews13.com. Please include the photographer's name and where they were taken.
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