Lawyer set fire at ex’s home while wearing an ankle monitor, Louisiana officials say
A lawyer set fire to his ex’s home while wearing an ankle monitor that he’d had since his release in June on charges including aggravated assault with a dangerous weapon involving a different victim, according to Louisiana officials.
The woman who lives in the home and shares a child with the man posted a video on Facebook on Jan. 14 that she said was captured by her surveillance system. It shows a man walking up to her house with what appears to be a fuel container and a lighter, setting a fire and walking away as it spreads. She also said the man slashed her vehicle’s tires.
“Now my house is destroyed, my cars are damaged, and the emotional damage is irreversible,” she wrote.
She did not respond to a request for comment from McClatchy News.
Firefighters responded to her Baton Rouge home at around 8:30 a.m. on Jan. 14 and found the front door on fire, according to a news release from the Baton Rouge Fire Department. No one was home at the time.
The department determined the cause to be arson, the release says. The blaze caused around $2,000 in damage, according to the department.
The department issued a warrant for Christian King, 30, on charges of simple arson, violation of protective orders and simple criminal damage to property. The police department took him into custody on unrelated warrants, according to the release.
King, who is listed as a lawyer eligible to practice in Texas, had been previously arrested in Orleans Parish on charges of aggravated assault with a firearm and domestic abuse aggravated assault with a dangerous weapon, according to sheriff’s office records.
King could not be reached for comment. An attorney for him could not be found.
Records show that King appeared in court on June 12 on those charges and was required to be “monitored by a GPS system” upon his release.
Jill Dennis, director of the Assured Supervision Accountability Program, a monitoring company for people released from the criminal justice system, told McClatchy News that her company was hired to monitor King on June 12 in connection with the Orleans Parish case.
On Jan. 5, the address of the Baton Rouge home was put on the company’s radar because the woman living there had filed a protective order to keep King away from the property, Dennis said. The protective order was a civil matter and unrelated to the charges King was previously arrested on in Orleans Parish, she said.
King violated the protective order multiple times after Jan. 5, and the company alerted Baton Rouge police each time, Dennis said. On Jan. 14, the company received an alert that he was at the property at around 3:15 a.m. and again at 8:20 a.m., she said.
At 8:20 a.m., Dennis said she was on the phone with emergency dispatchers telling them King was at the house when the woman called to say that she was watching King remotely through her surveillance camera feed. She was not home at the time.
Dennis immediately connected her with dispatchers.
“I merged her with 911, and she said, ‘Christian just set my house on fire. Please help, it’s burning,” Dennis said. “I could feel the pain and the fear and the anguish in her voice when she said, ‘He set my house on fire.’ She was watching in real time.”
Dennis said police later arrested King, and he is now in custody being held without bond. Baton Rouge police did not respond to a request for comment.
Dennis said she hopes the case will help bring attention and change to the powers afforded to GPS monitoring programs. She said if King had violated a protective order in a criminal matter, her company could have taken him into custody, but because the protective order in Baton Rouge was civil, the most she could do was call the police.
“I wish we could’ve done so much more for (this woman) rather than just call the police department,” Dennis said.
This story was originally published January 19, 2023 at 2:15 PM with the headline "Lawyer set fire at ex’s home while wearing an ankle monitor, Louisiana officials say."