Jacksonville police have seen\u00a0a rise in calls about people trespassing on vacant property, including a South Main Street property that caught fire this week.<\/p>\n
Although no one was charged in the fire because authorities believe it was unintentional, one person was arrested on a trespassing charge.<\/p>\n
Daniel A. Jensen, 30, who is homeless, was arrested at 8:49 a.m. Wednesday on a charge of criminal trespass to state-supported land. Police said he was inside a garage at 731\u00a0N. Main St., where the fire started\u00a0in the garage before spreading to the house.<\/p>\n
Jacksonville Fire Department Capt. Mike Hopper said the cause could not be determined because of the extent of damage to the structure.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Firefighters returned two more times Wednesday \u2014 at 12:59 p.m. and 1:57 p.m. \u2014 for reports of smoke, although there was no fire.\u00a0Lt. Dan Klendworth said some remnants still were smoldering from the initial blaze.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The property is owned by Morgan County and was supposed to be vacant when the fire started, Jacksonville police\u00a0Lt. Sean Walker said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“He was there in the garage at the time of the fire, but left and he was picked up two blocks away,” Walker said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was the second time this week that Jensen was removed from the property, according to Jacksonville Police Department records. Police were called to the property about 11:06 p.m. Tuesday and Jensen was arrested on a trespassing charge.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Since May 22, there have been at least 10 calls in which police were asked to remove a homeless person or people from various apartments or houses, according to a Journal-Courier database. The newspaper has recorded 546 police calls involving homeless individuals since January 2025.<\/p>\n
Firefighters were called earlier this week to a house in the 600 block of West Beecher Avenue. Someone had started a fire in a pot just outside the door. Neighbors said the house has been vacant for several months and was condemned by the city.<\/p>\n
There have several incidents of people trespassing since the owners left, neighbors said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jacksonville police have seen\u00a0a rise in calls about people trespassing on vacant property, including a South Main Street…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117,104938,115,278],"class_list":["post-297004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-jaxhomeless","tag-news","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}