Officials Predict More Arrests in Arson of Store : Thousand Oaks: Authorities won’t speculate if the fire at the comic-book business was a hate crime or for profit.

Despite the jailing of a 20-year-old Moorpark College student in the arson of a Thousand Oaks comic-book store, officials on Thursday predicted more arrests in the case.

The hints that Christopher David Nagano of Thousand Oaks was not the only suspect in the arson and vandalism of the store came as investigators refused to speculate on whether the case was still being classified as a hate crime or viewed as an arson-for-profit.

The continuing inquiry came amid disclosures that Nagano, who had ambitions to become an Army intelligence officer, was taken into custody with weapons and night-vision goggles, sheriff’s investigators said Thursday.

Nagano, who was being held in Ventura County Jail on $500,000 bail, telephoned his mother to relay a message to Jewish businessman Myron Cohen-Ross that he was innocent of scrawling anti-Semitic graffiti and of torching the Heroes and Legends store on Sept. 18.

The Thousand Oaks store was spray-painted with swastikas, “SS” and the words “Die Jew” before being set ablaze in a pre-dawn attack that shocked the community.

“I didn’t do it. I’m not guilty. I haven’t done anything wrong,” Zenaida Nagano quoted her son as saying.

She said that linking him to such a crime is not an accurate portrayal of her son. “This kid’s not how they’re picturing him now. He doesn’t drink. He doesn’t smoke. He doesn’t go partying,” she said. “It’s something that shocks the whole family, including him.”

Nagano was arrested Wednesday while dropping off a rifle and shotgun at a friend’s house in Newbury Park, Ventura County Sheriff’s Sgt. Kitty Hoberg said. Detectives said they have yet to check the registration of the weapons.

Detective David Ehrlich said the investigation has not been wrapped up and other arrests are pending. He declined to reveal other details in the case.

Nagano is the first suspect to be arrested in a two-month investigation that has involved the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department and the FBI.

The first reports of the fire classified it as a hate crime, though police later said it might have been set for economic reasons.

Police have never ruled out that possibility, but Cohen-Ross, an Agoura Hills resident, has denied having anything to do with the fire.

Sheriff’s deputies would not say what led them to connect Nagano, who is scheduled to be arraigned today, with the blaze.

After the incident, the Thousand Oaks City Council authorized a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of a suspect. And Jewish and Christian leaders rallied around Heroes and Legends owner Cohen-Ross.

Cohen-Ross said he was shocked to learn that Nagano was a suspect, given that he was a friendly and faithful customer.

Just last week, he said, Nagano came to his other comic-book store in Agoura Hills to buy a $2 issue of Robotech Comic, a futuristic, science-fiction series set in Japan. “I would remember if there was a problem.”

An avid comic-book collector, Nagano began coming to the Thousand Oaks store when he was 15, just after he moved to Thousand Oaks from Minnesota.

Cohen-Ross was one of the first people who befriended him, Nagano’s mother said.

And when she called Cohen-Ross to deliver her son’s message from jail, both of them expressed confusion over Nagano’s arrest.

“If you had said to me there was a customer of the store who was a suspect, he would be the last person I’d think of,” Cohen-Ross said. “It doesn’t make sense to me.”

A 1991 graduate of Thousand Oaks High School, Nagano worked part time last year at the Agoura Hills Target Range, where a manager said he dispensed ammunition and targets to amateur marksmen.

His knowledge of weapons made Nagano, then 19, seem more mature than he was, manager Ron Williams said. “He seemed like an OK guy,” Williams said.

For the past five years, Nagano has lived with his parents in a comfortable, two-story house in Thousand Oaks. Zenaida Nagano, 58, is from the Philippines, and her husband, Towru, is from Japan.

A small Catholic altar is in the living room where Zenaida Nagano wept over her son’s arrest. She said her only child attended Catholic school before transferring to Thousand Oaks High School.

Zenaida Nagano produced awards from shop class that her son had won at Thousand Oaks High School, where he earned A’s and B’s, she said. Two years ago, he was recognized by the school’s department of applied arts for his work in shop class.

His mother said the 6-foot-2 youth liked to spend his free time reading comics and lifting weights.

About 1 1/2 years ago, he signed up for Army boot camp in Virginia, where he had hoped to specialize in intelligence gathering, his mother said.

He had passed a security test and was excited about leaving. But he was rejected by the Army after a power saw sliced off the tips of the first two fingers on his left hand in a shop accident, she said. He also fractured his heel, and these physical problems prevented him from going to boot camp.

“He was extremely disappointed about it, about losing his fingers,” Zenaida Nagano said.

After the accidents, Nagano enrolled at Moorpark College but had not decided what to study.

He has taken a strong interest in law and was enrolled in a class in criminal justice, toying with the idea of becoming an attorney, she said. He had hoped to transfer to UCLA or Pepperdine University.

“I hope he gets through this unscathed,” she said. “We know he’s innocent. We know he’s not involved.”