(The following story by Denny Walsh appeared on the Sacramento Bee website on November 28.)
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The federal government’s investigation of Sacramento’s massive railroad trestle fire in March appeared to sustain a critical blow Tuesday, as authorities allowed the only known suspect to plead guilty to a minor charge and accept a sentence of 97 days already served as a pretrial detainee.
Jose Eduardo Moran-Marques pleaded guilty Tuesday to giving a false name when questioned May 15 about the fire by an agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who was investigating the arson along with the Sacramento Fire Department.
Moran-Marques was not released, however, because of an immigration hold order, and will be deported to his native El Salvador.
He has regularly been deported and re-entered the United States illegally. He told U.S. District Judge Edward J. Garcia on Tuesday that he is 30 and has had no formal education.
R. Steven Lapham, the assistant U. S. attorney who prosecuted the case, said after the sentencing that “the arson investigation is ongoing.”
“As far as Mr. Moran is concerned, we feel we’ve run our string on leads,” the veteran prosecutor said. “That doesn’t mean he didn’t do it. It simply means we don’t feel right now we can prove it.”
Moran-Marques’ attorney, Dina Santos, insists her client had nothing to do with the trestle fire.
“This guy didn’t burn down the trestle,” she said after the sentencing. “The government was grasping at straws.
“If there was any evidence, Steve Lapham would have charged him with it.”
Moran-Marques told The Bee in a jailhouse interview he had nothing to do with the March 15 fire that destroyed a 1,400-foot-long Union Pacific Railroad trestle along the American River Parkway in the Arden area, cutting one of the railroad’s main east-west arteries.
He has given at least three accounts – two to law enforcement and one to The Bee – as to his whereabouts at the time of the blaze.
Moran-Marques was accused in a federal grand jury indictment of falsely stating he was “in the area of 47th Avenue in Sacramento” when the fire was set. Another count of the indictment charged him with falsely stating he was near Folsom Lake at the time of the fire.
Lapham moved Tuesday to dismiss the two charges relating to his location and Garcia granted the motion.
Moran-Marques told Bee reporters he was eating at Loaves & Fishes, a downtown Sacramento center that provides food and services to the homeless, on the afternoon of the fire. He said he saw the smoke as he was leaving the center.
A week after the fire, ATF Special Agent Steve Carman received information from a citizen informant who claimed to have overheard Moran-Marques admit he committed the arson.
Court records show that Moran-Marques placed a call from his cellular telephone at 5:37 p.m., four minutes before the fire was first reported. Based on the location of the cell phone tower through which his phone signal was transmitted, Moran-Marques was near the trestle at the time he made the call, according to a radio frequency engineer cooperating with the government.
In the months leading up to and shortly after the fire, Moran-Marques had several encounters with American River Parkway rangers.
These encounters occurred in the area of the trestle, and Moran-Marques had an encampment approximately a half mile from the trestle.
One or more of the encounters resulted in Moran-Marques receiving a citation for illegal camping.
A source close to the arson investigation, who did not want to be identified because he is not authorized to speak publicly on the subject, said other homeless people told investigators that Moran-Marques said he set the fire to get back at police and park rangers for their harassment of the homeless in the parkway area.