Schuylkill man receives up to a year in prison for role in at least 6 incidents.
By Chris Parker
The Morning Call
Copyright 2007 The Morning Call, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
SCHUYLKILL COUNTY, Pa. — A former Schuylkill County volunteer firefighter who admitted igniting blazes in two townships, then racing with his company to douse them, was sentenced Tuesday to up to a year in jail on arson and related charges.
Corey S. Stambaugh, 19, of Ashland, also must pay $25,000 in restitution to the victims. The amount is the total owed by Stambaugh and John T. Cheeseman, 20, of Gordon, another firefighter who set the fires with him.
Cheeseman was sentenced April 5 to four months to two years in jail, but became so distraught at the prospect of prison that a judge changed his sentence to house arrest with electronic monitoring.
Stambaugh on Tuesday told President Judge William E. Baldwin he fell in with the “wrong crowd,” but he turned around his life since setting the fires in February 2006.
Baldwin, told Stambaugh his actions “created danger to property and people,” but let him start his sentence June 1 and have immediate work release. Stambaugh was sentenced to three months up to a year in prison plus a year probation. He was given credit for the two days he served in jail.
District Attorney James P. Goodman told Baldwin that Stambaugh “was a fireman and he set fires. There were two victims.”
Stambaugh testified he dropped out of high school while living with his father, who “kicked me out” of his house. Then, he said, he fell in with a bad crowd.
“My life was going in the wrong direction,” he said.
Since his March 9, 2006 arrest, Stambaugh said, he has made significant changes.
“I stopped hanging out with people I never should have been hanging out with,” he told Baldwin.
He said he is engaged to be married, has a house, works full-time as a forklift operator and has saved $2,500 toward restitution. He told Baldwin he regretted setting the fires and apologized to the victims.
Stambaugh pleaded guilty Feb. 21 to nine counts of arson and three counts of criminal mischief.
According to police documents and court testimony, Cheeseman and Stambaugh lit the fires, then raced with fellow volunteers to put them out even when their fire companies weren’t summoned or were called off.
Police charged the men with six fires in nine days in Barry and Butler A house and barn were torched and put the lives of several firefighters at risk, though there were no injuries, police said.
State police fire marshals began investigating after a Feb. 25, 2006, barn fire at 474 Hinkel Road, Barry Township. It was the fifth local fire in five days - three in a half-mile stretch of Hinkel Road, police said.
Police determined the fire was arson, as were fires on Feb. 20, 2006, in a mulch pile at Lindenmuth Lumber, 458 Hinkel Road, and Feb. 21, 2006, in an unoccupied home at 60 Maplewood Road, Barry Township, court papers show.
The day investigators determined the fires were arsons, there was a brush fire near a sewage treatment plant on Biddle Street in Butler Township near Gordon, police said. Police said they got rosters from Citizens Fire Company in Gordon and American Fire Company in Fountain Springs and determined Cheeseman, a Gordon member, and Stambaugh, a Fountain Springs member, responded to all the fires.