La Jolla

The Metro Arson Strike Team has determined that a fire that destroyed a $765,000 house in La Jolla on Saturday was set.

Sgt. Frank Barone said the five-bedroom house on La Jolla Farms Road was destroyed by igniting natural gas and four five-gallon cans of gasoline. He said the cans were unusually rounded with domed tops but efforts to track down who bought or filled the cans had been futile.

Barone said that numerous interviews with neighbors have provided no clues to the arsonist’s identity or motive for setting the explosive fire, which reduced the house and garage to rubble. He said gasoline or natural gas alone could have ruined the house but the two elements combined destroyed the house within an hour despite the efforts of 50 firefighters. No one was injured in the fire, but the explosion awakened neighbors.

The owner of the house and the one-acre plot is Nabeel Akeel, a construction consultant from Saudi Arabia. He was in Las Vegas at the time of the fire.

Steven Lazarian, Akeel’s attorney, said Akeel has no personal enemies or business rivals and has no idea who would have set the blaze.

“He’s somewhat shaken physically and emotionally by the whole thing,” Lazarian said. “It’s surprising to us, and we’re somewhat confused.”

He said Akeel had owned the house for about two years.

“We’re trying to figure out exactly what happened,” Lazarian said. “It’s kind of a mystery right now.”

He said it is unlikely that the arson was racially or politically motivated, but he added that personally threatening graffiti had been scrawled on Akeel’s wall in February and that a neighbor found a homemade bomb on his lawn the morning before the fire.

“That neighborhood is a mixed bag,” Lazarian said. “There are Persians, Saudis, Jews, whites, blacks. I just can’t believe that someone who would set a fire that causes total destruction to someone’s residence would be racially motivated.”

Arson detectives are continuing the investigation.