By Kimberly Vetter
The Advocate
BATON ROUGE, La. — Former volunteer firefighter Adam Paul Carriere wanted to be a hero and went about it by setting 10 fires in four parishes, then rushing to the scenes to help douse the blazes, his wife and authorities said.
“He was trying to impress people,” said Talitha Carriere, Adam Carriere’s wife. “It’s like he needs to be the hero.”
State Fire Marshal Butch Browning said at a Thursday news conference that Adam Carriere is a serial arsonist who set fires because he wanted to be an accepted member of the community.
“He did this terrible crime to be a hero and to be accepted in the fire department ranks,” Browning said. “He violated the public trust and this is intolerable.”
Carriere is accused of setting 10 fires between April 17, 2007, and Jan. 15 in Acadia, East Baton Rouge, St. Landry and West Feliciana parishes, Browning said.
The 24-year-old was a probationary volunteer firefighter in West Feliciana Parish when he set two of the fires and was a probationary volunteer firefighter in Church Point when he set another, Browning said.
Carriere applied to be a firefighter with three other fire departments during the past four years but was not accepted, the fire marshal said.
Four of the structures Carriere is accused of burning were vacant houses and two were vacant businesses, Browning said. Another three were occupied businesses and one was a hay barn.
No one was at the occupied structures when the fires occurred, Browning said.
But had Carriere not been caught, “I think the severity of the fires would have progressed,” the fire marshal said, adding that people could have been injured or killed.
“We are glad he is off the streets,” Browning said. “Adam Carriere posed a serious threat to the state of Louisiana.”
The state Fire Marshal’s Office arrested Carriere on Jan. 16 in the two vacant building fires set the day before in the Tunica community in West Feliciana Parish.
Carriere had joined West Feliciana Parish Fire Protection District 1 as a probationary firefighter three days before the fires occurred, Browning said.
After firefighters determined the fires had been intentionally set, a preliminary investigation by the fire district and sheriff’s deputies identified Carriere as a possible suspect, Browning said. The Fire Marshal’s Office then joined the investigation, culminating in Carriere’s arrest.
During the next two weeks, fire investigators across the state tied Carriere to eight additional fires, Browning said.
Talitha Carriere said in a telephone interview Wednesday that the arrest of her husband, from whom she has been separated for four months, is not a surprise.
“He was obsessed with fire,” she said. “It was like an addiction.”
Every time Adam Carriere encountered a fire or a firetruck, he would chase it, Talitha Carriere said. When he was at home, he was either burning trash, copper or something on the grill, she said
“He just liked to burn stuff,” Talitha Carriere added.
Adam Carriere also liked to put out fires, his wife and investigators said.
District 6 Fire Chief Joel Hancock said at the news conference that Carriere was at the scene of two fires he is accused of setting on March 24 at the Shell Fuel Station at 7111 Hooper Road.
“He asked us about how to become a volunteer firefighter,” Hancock said, adding that investigators suspected Carriere in the fires back then but did not have enough evidence to arrest him.
Col. Randy Metz, chief deputy with the West Feliciana Parish Sheriff’s Department, said Carriere was at one of two of the fires he allegedly set in West Feliciana Parish.
“We knew it was an arson and we knew he needed to be talked to,” Metz said at the news conference. “That’s why we called the Fire Marshal’s Office.”
Talitha Carriere said her husband often took her to the scenes of fires and would try to put them out.
“He looked like a hero but he was really the villain,” she said. “He’s not what he seems.”
Adam Carriere is in West Feliciana Parish Prison on two counts of arson and two counts of criminal trespassing. His bond is $150,000.
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