Ex-Firefighter Trainee Guilty of 7 Counts in Series of Fires : Arson: Douglas Hunziker was acquitted of four other charges. The prosecution argued that he set the blazes to rescue victims.

A former firefighter trainee from Torrance was convicted Friday of six felony arson counts and one misdemeanor charge in connection with a series of South Bay fires.

The jury rejected defense claims that Douglas Hunziker’s presence at the fires was merely a coincidence worthy of the Guinness Book of World Records.

Hunziker, 22, who was acquitted of four other felony charges, slumped slightly, closed his eyes and rested his forehead on one hand as the verdicts were read. He could be ordered to serve up to 11 years in state prison when he is sentenced Aug. 20.

Hunziker had been accused of setting 10 fires throughout the South Bay over a seven-month period, including one at his home, one at a former friend’s home, three at a Hermosa Beach comedy and magic club where he worked, one at a driving school he attended and one at the Redondo Beach nightclub he frequented.

Jurors in Pomona Superior Court, where the case was transferred for scheduling reasons, deliberated more than three days after hearing two weeks of testimony.

“Boy, did we give this some thought,” said juror Rudy Marquez, 28, of Walnut. “We came up with every situation that could have happened (to clear Hunziker) . . . but there were just too many coincidences.”

Defense attorney Darryl Genis had hoped to persuade jurors that Hunziker’s presence at nine of the 10 fires he was accused of setting was just that--coincidence.

Reading from the Guinness Book of World Records during his closing argument, Genis told jurors about a forest ranger struck by lightning seven times and a woman who had given birth to 16 sets of twins, seven sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets. After the verdicts were read, Genis expressed disappointment that jurors convicted Hunziker on what was largely circumstantial evidence.

“Personally, I’m saddened,” he said. “I think the jury worked dutifully and conscientiously and I can’t say that they’re wrong, I can only say I don’t agree.”

Noting that jurors acquitted Hunziker of four fires that “were the weakest ones anyway,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Wilson praised the verdicts.

“The jury seemed eminently conscientious,” he said. “The verdicts . . . vindicate the arson investigations of all three cities.”

Because of the circumstantial nature of the evidence, prosecutors had twice rejected investigators’ efforts to have Hunziker charged in the series of fires, which began with a trash can blaze in front of his home shortly after midnight on July 5, 1991.

Then in January, an employee at the Red Onion nightclub and restaurant in Redondo Beach told police that he saw Hunziker setting fire to a toilet seat-cover dispenser in one of the nightclub’s restrooms.

That eyewitness testimony made the circumstantial evidence implicating Hunziker in the other fires more believable, Wilson said.

In 1989 and 1990, Hunziker completed about 300 hours of firefighting classes as part of an Explorer Scout Program run by the Boy Scouts and the Los Angeles County Fire Department. He was expelled after he admitted stealing an ambulance driver’s wallet.

Wilson argued that Hunziker was vanity arsonist, setting fires so he could evacuate people and help put out the flames.

“He was creating his own situations and then rescuing his own victims,” Wilson told jurors at one point in the proceedings. “. . . The defendant cast himself in the role of hero.”