Two men have been convicted of arson and related offenses for a row home fire in Upper Darby in the summer of 2024.
Wesley Barillas-Ramos and Jessel Arita, both 25 from Millbourne, were also found guilty of risking a catastrophe and conspiracy charges for the all-hands conflagration on Aug. 25, 2024.
According to previously released information:
The call came in about 1:30 a.m. for the rear of a house on fire on the 100 block of Richfield Road.
Upper Darby Fire Chief Brian Boyce said the fire started with trash in the rear and quickly spread to the garages and basements of two homes.
“The whole rear is engulfed,” arriving police said over the radio. “We’ll start evacuating. It’s expanding. Something is exploding.”
Another officer said, “It’s fully engulfed. Tell them to expedite.”
Officers determined the explosions involved electrical lines on the back of the house.
Radio reports indicated crews had to wait about 30 minutes for PECO to shut off power before they could tamp down the blaze. It wast under control soon after that happened.
According to affidavits of probable cause for both men’s arrests written by Detective Leo Hanshaw:
A red Nissan Versa with a black bumper and was seen in video surveillance about a block from the fire scene with headlights off at 1:25 a.m.
The same vehicle is then seen stopping in the alley where the fire started. A male voice and noise from a falling bottle containing gasoline could be heard. There is also a flash as the fire begins to spread and the vehicle takes off.
No one was killed or injured, but Assistant District Attorney Amy Cappelli said during trial before Common Pleas Court Judge Mary Alice Brennan last week that this fire in the middle of a block of row homes easily could have gone another way.
License plate readers in other areas of the township connected the Versa to Barrios-Ramos. His movements that night were also tracked by cameras that showed the vehicle visit a gas station in Millbourne, where Cappelli said Barrios-Ramos could be seen filling an empty bottle with gasoline. Arita was holding the bottle.
Additional video showed the Versa traveling on the 6900 block of Chestnut Street with its headlights off at 1:25 a.m., then making a turn toward the fire scene.
No other vehicles of the same make or model are seen in the area.
At 1:30 a.m., the Versa is seen traveling west on Ludlow Street and crossing 69th Street toward Kent Road, about a block from the fire scene. Two minutes later it is seen returning to the same gas station in Millbourne.
The Versa was stopped Sept. 5 in Upper Darby and towed to a police impound lot, where a gallon-jug of water that had been filled with gasoline was found in the trunk.
Barrios-Ramos was driving at the time and was taken into custody. Arita was released, but his phone was left inside the vehicle.
Arita later told police that he was owed money by a former tenant of the property on Richfield.
Cappelli pointed to cellphone data that showed Arita called that person four times in the hour before the fire, twice at 12:37 a.m. and twice at 12:45 a.m.
Defense counsel Elan Kaplan, representing Barrios-Ramos, argued prosecutors were urging the jury to leap to conclusions that the vehicle seen in the alley that night and his client’s car is one and the same, though that was far from clear in the black-and-white video.
Kaplan added that the bottle of gasoline in the car did not prove Barrios-Ramos started the fire and there had been no testing of debris from the fire scene to determine if an accelerant was used.
Kaplan said there was little evidence of a motive beyond one text referencing some money owed by a man who did not even live at that address anymore.
Attorney Daryl Shorter, representing Arita, said two other people had been evicted from that same property just a few days before the fire, but were absent from the investigation.
While the commonwealth had provided call logs for his client, it had not retrieved location data for either of their cellphones, Shorter noted. He appeared to concede they were at the gas station that night, but noted that is just a block or two from Arita’s home.
The jury deliberated for about seven hours before returning a guilty verdict on all counts.
Sentencing is set for May 28.