Feds: Pa. arson suspect said classmate helped him (AP)

[Yahoo! News]

AP - PHILADELPHIA Federal prosecutors say a teenager charged with setting fires in a small steel town near Philadelphia told police he committed the crimes with a vocational school classmate but later retracted the statement.

Police found accelerants, firefighting equipment and a newspaper article about the arsons plaguing a small steel town at the home of a wannabe firefighter they arrested while investigating the crimes, which have terrified residents for months and left many of them homeless, federal prosecutors said.

Mark Gilliam is charged only with a fire at a Thorndale restaurant hours after the torching of 15 row houses in nearby Coatesville, an economically struggling town of about 11,000 people. A former classmate is charged with the row houses blaze and several others in the town, which is 35 miles west of Philadelphia.

Gilliam, 19, applied this month to join the West Bradford Fire Co., in Chester County, but was rejected. Still, the stocky, tattooed teenager, who prosecutors said had bought firefighting gear and drove a car illegally equipped with strobe lights to make it appear he was a firefighter, wore a shirt adorned with the department's gold crest at a brief federal court appearance Friday afternoon.

"Mark Gilliam is clearly someone who was very interested in being a firefighter, and he was very interested in fires," U.S. Attorney Laurie Magid said.

Another teen, Roger Barlow Jr., was charged Thursday with setting nine fires in Coatesville in a five-week period this year, including the one that destroyed the row houses on Jan. 24 and put dozens of people out of their homes.

Barlow, 19, told investigators that Gilliam, a former vocational school classmate, joined him in the crime spree, although he later retracted the statement in a phone call with Gilliam, according to a federal agent's affidavit filed Friday.

With dozens of Coatesville's 66 arsons since January 2008 still unsolved, investigators hope to learn more about Gilliam and Barlow, who met about two years ago, Magid said Friday.

Gilliam, of West Chester, did not enter a plea at his Friday court appearance. A judge ordered him held until a Feb. 27 bail and probable cause hearing. Defense lawyer Richard E. Meanix said only that Gilliam is presumed innocent.

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