Opening statements were made Monday in the trial for an associate professor at Fort Lewis College charged with felony arson on suspicion of setting fire to the chip aisle at south City Market nearly two years ago in Durango.
It is the second attempt to hold a trial for Bradley Clark. The first ended in a mistrial in June after a juror exhibited COVID-19-like symptoms and another ran into day care problems, leaving only 11 jurors.
Fourteen jurors were seated Monday, including two alternates.
Prosecutors say Clark can be seen on video surveillance pushing a cart into Aisle 7 and leaving a short time later the same way he entered. He then goes through self-checkout and leaves the store.
Within about a minute of Clark leaving the aisle, a man informs a checkout stand employee about a fire in the chip aisle.
The employee notifies her manager, who grabs a fire extinguisher and directs another employee to use the store intercom to have customers go to the front of the store and prepare to leave. A customer took the fire extinguisher from the front-end manager and sprayed the chips. The fire extinguisher apparently set off the sprinkler system in the store.
The fire was reported about 8:05 p.m. Oct. 5, 2019. The fire, smoke and sprinklers resulted in tens of thousands of dollars in damage and lost merchandise.
No surveillance footage actually captured the fire being set; it only shows Clark entering the aisle and leaving the aisle. It also shows other people entering and leaving the aisle before the fire started and after it had sprang to life.
Durango defense lawyer Brian Schowalter said Clark did not set the fire, and the case is about a “rush to judgment.”
He said once a loss prevention employee identified Clark as a suspect, police viewed every little thing he did as “suspicious,” including putting his hoodie on at the self-checkout lane.
“All of these innocuous things have suddenly become sinister because of this rush to judgment,” Schowalter told jurors.
The Durango Police Department went to Clark’s house about 10:30 the next night with a search warrant. When asked whether he was aware of the fire at south City Market, he said he “read about the fire,” said Deputy District Attorney Vance Davis.
This is at least the third time Clark has been accused of arson.
According to the Durango Police Department, Clark was arrested in 2007 in connection with a dumpster fire, though prosecutors ultimately dropped the charges. The next year, he was identified as a possible suspect for setting fire to a professor’s door at FLC. Ultimately, there wasn’t enough evidence to make an arrest, a college spokeswoman said in a previous interview.
Clark, an associate professor of political science at FLC, was put on paid administrative leave “pending the findings of the trial,” according to FLC in a previous inquiry. He remained on the faculty directory as of Monday.
The trial in 6th Judicial District Court in La Plata County is scheduled to go through Friday. District Judge Suzanne Carlson is overseeing the trial.
shane@durangoherald.com
An earlier version of this story gave an incorrect time of the fire call.
