LAKEPORT, Calif. – The prosecution on Friday continued to lay out the basics of its case in the preliminary hearing of the man accused of setting the Clayton fire that devastated Lower Lake in 2015 as well as 15 other wildland fires over the course of a year.
The Lake County District Attorney's Office has charged Damin Anthony Pashilk, 43, of Clearlake with 23 counts for setting 16 fires and attempting to start a 17th that self-extinguished between July of 2015 and August of 2016.
Testimony so far has confirmed that Pashilk was under surveillance for more than a year before authorities said he set the Clayton fire on Aug. 13, 2016. He was arrested two days later and has remained in custody – primarily in an out-of-county facility – for most of that time.
As it was on the proceeding's first day on Thursday, on Friday all of the witness testimony was offered by Cal Fire personnel involved with investigating the various fires Pashilk is accused of setting as well as keeping him under surveillance.
On Friday morning, Russell West, a fire captain and investigator; Bryan Dudley, a fire apparatus engineer in 2016; and Ryan Finn, a Cal Fire battalion chief, all took the stand.
West and Dudley testified about the cause and origin of the Western fire on Western Mine Road near Middletown on July 23, 2016, while Finn explained Cal Fire's surveillance activities.
They were followed by Cal Fire Battalion Chief John Schnaidt and Forester Damon Denman, who also is a law enforcement officer with the agency.
Friday’s testimony began to focus more on the Clayton fire, larger and more destructive than all of the other fires combined by orders of magnitude.
Tracking the suspect
Schnaidt was part of the team conducting surveillance of Pashilk's activities during 2016. He recounted tracking Pashilk's travels both by following him and by a GPS tracking device that investigators had put on Pashilk's Chrysler Sebring while it was parked at Twin Pine Casino in Middletown.
On Thursday, investigators had recounted looking for a green Subaru station wagon that Pashilk had been known to drive in 2015 on surveillance video. Hinchcliff told Lake County News that Pashilk later sold that car.
The other car that was key to the case was Pashilk's light gray two-door Chrysler Sebring, distinctive for its sunroof and large alloy wheels. Chief Deputy District Attorney Richard Hinchcliff, who is prosecuting the case, said he doesn't know the whereabouts of that car.
The GPS tracking device was installed once and then reinstalled twice more in order to refresh its batteries, which Schnaidt said they wanted to do every one to two weeks. The last time it was replaced was on Aug. 12, 2016, the day before the Clayton fire began.
During his testimony, Schnaidt explained that he was both following Pashilk and using the GPS tracker to monitor him on Aug. 9, 2016, the day the Canyon fire occurred.
That day, he followed Pashilk from Twin Pine Casino to Lower Lake. The GPS tracker then showed Pashilk's vehicle turn onto Seigler Canyon Road near Lower Lake. The Chrysler then turned around and headed back toward Lower Lake on Highway 29. Schnaidt said he could see Pashilk was alone in the car.
When Schnaidt drove down Seigler Canyon Road to check the area, he encountered the Canyon fire, which was pushing into a mobile home. He worked to get the residents evacuated.
He also was among several Cal Fire investigators tracking Pashilk on Aug. 13, 2016, the day the Clayton fire started
On that afternoon, just after 4:30 p.m., Schnaidt was at the Chevron gas station in Middletown where he saw Pashilk and his Chrysler. Pashilk, who was alone, went into the mini mart, then got back into his car and drove northbound on Highway 29 in the direction of Lower Lake.
Schnaidt, who followed a few miles behind Pashilk, said the GPS tracker showed that the Chrysler drove down Clayton Creek Road. According to his daily tracking log, at 4:55 p.m. he then drove down the road to see where the Chrysler had stopped and saw a fire, measuring 20 feet by 20 feet, on the east side of Clayton Creek Road.
Denman, who also was following Pashilk that day and monitoring him on the GPS tracker, was already at the scene, Schnaidt said he had four very large metal washers that he threw down at the four corners of the fire because he wanted to assist the investigating officer and be able to show where the fire was at, at a certain time.
Schnaidt said he tried to put out the fire but the flames already were tall and it took off, burning across a grass field with wind on it. He said he also couldn't get past a barbed wire fence quickly enough.
By the time he tried to knock it down, “The fire already was gone,” said Schnaidt, describing the beginning of a blaze that would in the days to come destroy 300 structures in Lower Lake and burn more than 3,900 acres.
While firefighters took over trying to stop the fire, Schnaidt continued to track Pashilk's movements, noting that after leaving the Clayton Creek Road area Pashilk's Chrysler was tracked to his home on Koloko in Clearlake just after 5:20 p.m. At 5:50 p.m., Pashilk was tracked driving alone down Lakeshore, where he went to the Flyer's Gas Station.
Then, minutes after 6:30 p.m., Schnaidt saw Pashilk and his vehicle parked on the west side of Highway 29, facing southbound, just south of Spruce Grove and Clayton Creek roads, in the fire area.
Defense attorney Mitch Hauptman noted during cross examination that the GPS on his phone sometimes shows him as being in a place that's different from his actual location. He questioned how fine-tuned the GPS tracker used by investigators actually is, with Schnaidt noting that it's very accurate, down to meters.
Hauptman asked if the information from the tracker and how it's relayed is at least partially dependent on cell signal, and Schnaidt confirmed it is.
Hauptman then said he assumed that Schnaidt had been driving around Lake County and was aware of spotty cell phone service in some areas. “How at all does that impact your surveillance and tracking?”
Schnaidt said that one of the trackers could pick up Pashilk's actions all the way through Big Canyon while others couldn't, and noted that when they retrieve the tracker they can download the real-time tracking information that will show his location even when cell service is lost.
Hauptman asked if there were any issues with satellite coverage, wooded areas or other factors that might interfere with the device. “It seemed like it was working fine,” said Schnaidt, even when the coverage wasn't always good.
Schnaidt said he had hoped to catch Pashilk in the act, but never did quite see him doing anything. Under Hauptman's questioning, Schnaidt said there were no other suspects in the fires.
He also said he had no issues with the GPS tracker on Aug. 9, when the Canyon fire started, or on Aug. 13, when the Clayton fire began. As for following a suspect as well as tracking them with GPS, Schnaidt said, “We always try to get eyes on the vehicle to corroborate that,” acknowledging there were times when Pashilk's vehicle was out of his view.
When Hinchcliff asked about the GPS tracker's performance, Schnaidt said it hadn't given wrong locations and it was always accurate and correct.
Another investigator also tracks Pashilk
During his testimony, Denman – who said he has done at least 10 arson investigations – explained that he does surveillance, for which he has taken a 40-hour course at the Cal Fire academy.
He began tracking Pashilk on July 23, 2016, the day the Western fire started near Middletown, and would track him every day of August 2016, leading up to Pashilk's arrest on Aug. 15, two days after the Clayton fire started.
Beginning that evening, he and another officer separately tracked Pashilk from the Twin Pine Casino parking lot toward Lower Lake, but they were not using the GPS tracking device. They then began following another light-colored car and realized they had passed Pashilk, who had turned off onto Western Mine Road.
They returned to Twin Pine Casino shortly before 7:30 p.m. and saw that Pashilk's Chrysler was back at that location, with no one in it. Just before 8:15 p.m., they saw the vehicle leave, heading northbound on Highway 29 toward Clearlake. Pashilk was in the front passenger seat and two white female adults – one driving, one in the backseat – were with him.
Denman also tracked Pashilk on July 25, 2016, when he also saw a woman riding with him and then Pashilk driving alone, and again on July 26, 2016, when he was again doing mobile surveillance.
On July 26, 2016, Denman was assigned to a prominent overlook on Sulphur Bank Road northwest of the city of Clearlake, in an area selected as an observation point due to a number of fires having occurred there. He said he was watching for the Chrysler or anyone else to go by.
Just after 4:34 p.m. that day, Denman saw a Chrysler Sebring traveling northwest on Sulphur Bank Road. It had a sunroof and notable tire rims, as Pashilk's vehicle had. Denham said he used his binoculars to view it from a quarter mile away. While he said it was the same make and model, he couldn't see a license plate from that distance, nor could he see Pashilk in the car.
As the car traveled along the road, it went into a tree-shrouded area at about 40 miles per hour. He said it didn't emerge back into sight in an open area further up the road. Instead, he heard a motor winding up and saw the Sebring heading back toward Clearlake at a high rate of speed – he estimated it was going 60-plus miles per hour.
After the Chrysler left, Denman said he didn't see any smoke, but he spotted a white utility pickup pull up nearby. Shortly after 4:45 p.m. Denman drove up to the area where the pickup was parked and met a man in a bright red construction workers' shirt standing next to a roadside ditch filled with leaves and other dry materials, using a shovel to put out a small fire and calling it in to 911 on his cell phone.
The man, whose last name was given as Luna, told Denman he had pulled up after seeing the fire, and that he was passed by another vehicle – which he thought was white – at a high rate of speed. The Chrysler, it was noted, was light-colored. Luna didn't remember anything about the driver.
Denman also testified to surveilling Pashilk on July 29, 2016, the date the North Branch fire occurred on Ogulin Canyon Road just north of the city of Clearlake.
He said he saw Pashilk driving his Chrysler slowly southbound on Lakeshore Drive, smoke a cigarette and looking out toward the smoke rising from the fire in Ogulin Canyon. Within 10 minutes he saw Pashilk again, pulled out into a wide spot 300 feet down Point Lakeview Road, where he could look across and see the smoke from that fire.
On Aug. 13, 2016, Denman – like Schnaidt – was conducting mobile surveillance of Pashilk, both following him in his vehicle and using the data from the GPS tracker that had been reinstalled on the Chrysler the previous day.
He had started following the Chrysler as it traveled north on Highway 29 toward Lower Lake just after 4:30 p.m. Denman estimated he was about two to three miles behind the Chrysler when he saw the icon for the vehicle on the GPS tracker signal that it had turned onto Clayton Creek Road's north entrance a few minutes before 5 p.m. and driven in about a quarter mile before turning around, returning to Highway 29 and continuing north.
Shortly after the Chrysler left, Denman turned onto Clayton Creek Road and drove about 1,000 feet. As he came around a corner he saw a fire on the lefthand side – or the east side – of the road, approximately 15 feet in diameter, burning in thigh high grass.
“It was burning aggressively,” Denman said, explaining that he pulled over and reported it to 911. Schnaidt pulled up behind him and marked the edges of the fire.
Denman said he didn't try to put it out. From his experience, it was well established and burning hot, with flames rising to 10 feet high. That was the start of the Clayton fire.
Hauptman questioned if Denman had actually seen the Chrysler on Clayton Creek. Denman said he didn't, he just saw it reported on the GPS tracker – and how long the car had actually been on that road. Denman estimated maybe two minutes.
Testimony will continue on Feb. 21. The preliminary hearing is anticipated to continue until early March.
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