Four people have been convicted of a deliberately fire that caused $ 10 million damage to the Daniel Beard bridge last year.
The bridge, also known as the Big Mac bridge, is a 1,300 -foot twin bridge that carries eight lanes of the interstate 471 on the Ohio river between Cincinnati, Ohio and Newport, Ky.
The fire on November 1 was lit in a playground under the Sawyer Point Park bridge, which runs along the river to Cincinnati. The fire destroyed the courtyard and melted the bridge’s steel beams, causing traffic disorders for more than three months. Repair efforts took 100 days to complete -according to the Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office.
Terry Stiles, 39, of Arlington Heights, Ohio, was found guilty of incorporating the fire as part of a supplication agreement. He was sentenced to nine years in federal prison. Zachary Stumpf, 23, from Owensville, Ohio, was sentenced to three years of obstruction of justice obstruction, Kaitlen Hall, 25, and James Hamilton, 26, both of Arlington Heights, were to blame for official business obstruction, a crime.
The Hamilton County prosecutor, Connie Pillich
He said the trio was looking for scooters to steal. Stiles set the fire by collecting remains in the playground under the bridge, lit with a lighter and then brushing it with his arm to sprinkle the waste, said Pillich.
“The cameras detected that the flames rose around 8 feet in the yard and rose in a few minutes,” he said.
When he confessed, Pillich said that Stiles admitted “to put many fires for years because he likes fires.”
As Red, Ohio’s transport department contracted Odot hired Hinckley, based in Ohio, The Great Lakes Construction Co. to make emergency repairs. The work included the replacement of some of the bridge’s steel beams, as well as an area of the bridge roof and an overload sign. Drones and robots were used in the style of dogs equipped with Lidar scanners to evaluate the damage.
At a previous press conference, Cincinnatti City Manager, Sheryl Long, said that the fire caused flames that reached 40 feet heights, burning at extremely high temperatures and completely destroying the area under the bridge.
Pillich attributed the rapid rise in the fire to the playgrounds, including compound covers and recycled tires, both containing oil. He added, however, that “it was only because of a human who started the fire that the bridge was damaged.”
Hamilton was charged after the fact because he helped Stiles, Stumpf and Hall evading researchers, Pillich said.
