Click here to subscribe today or Login.
PITTSBURGH (AP) — A man with mental health issues will spend four to eight years in prison for causing an apartment fire that spread to several buildings and caused $2 million damage to the main business district of a poor Pittsburgh suburb
Twenty-eight-year-old Edward McDonald was sentenced Thursday. He pleaded no contest in June to 15 arson-related counts in the January 2015 fire in Homestead.
Authorities say McDonald told them he’d been hearing voices and was depressed before dousing his couch with lighter fluid, though he claimed to not recall setting it afire. Two people were hurt when the fire spread to four other buildings.
On Thursday, McDonald told an Allegheny County judge he was off his medication and that he accidentally spilled the fluid while filling a lighter.