Officials Seek to Interview Fire Witness : Probe: Man’s story seems to support suspects’ account. But authorities express caution.

Confronted with the sudden appearance of a potentially key witness, investigators searching for suspects in last year’s deadly Calabasas/Malibu fire scrambled Friday to determine whether they still have a case and arranged to meet the man for a re-enactment of the early moments of the blaze.

Robert Blakeley, an Agoura Hills contractor who surfaced Thursday night in an interview with The Times, gave an account that appears to corroborate the version of events provided by two firefighters--Steven R. Shelp, 29, and Nicholas A. Durepo, 24--who are under investigation for allegedly setting the fire.

On Friday, authorities expressed confidence that Blakeley is the mysterious missing “plumber” pictured in a Times photo published in recent days. He emerged from obscurity to find himself instantly in demand. Sheriff’s investigators, district attorney’s officials, television and print reporters--all wanted to talk to him.

“I feel sorry for movie stars,” he told a crush of reporters outside his modest house after he drove up early Friday evening in a white GMC truck. “I’m kind of a simple guy.”

Blakeley said he had not yet met with investigators.

One top official, Los Angeles Fire Chief Donald O. Manning, said he hoped that information provided by Blakeley would lead to a quick resolution of the case, which has proved an embarrassment for his department because Shelp was admitted to the city’s Fire Department Academy after the blaze and has since joined the force.

“I am pleased that a witness that the sheriff’s investigators had been looking for has been located,” he said. “I think it’s a cloud that certainly is hanging over the fire service in general and over LAFD in particular.”

Significantly for the two suspects, Blakeley said he was passing by the area where the fire ignited Nov. 2 and stopped to try to put it out a few minutes before Shelp and Durepo pulled up behind him.

In addition, he may be able to help investigators sort out another unanswered question. Sheriff’s Department investigators have expressed doubts about some aspects of the account given by the suspects, including their contention that a passing plumber gave them a device to hook their garden hose to a nearby fire hydrant.

Without identifying the suspects by name, Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block has repeatedly cited the issue of the mysterious passing plumber and investigators’ inability to locate him, suggesting that the suspects made up that detail in order to cover for the fact that they had brought the device along and had set the fire in order to then put it out and be hailed as heroes.

In his interview with The Times, Blakeley said he provided the adapter for the fire hydrant, as Shelp and Durepo alleged. If Blakeley’s statements hold up under scrutiny by investigators, they could bolster the versions provided by the two suspects.

Although investigators declined to comment on whether the latest disclosures would harm their case, a source in the district attorney’s office said they appeared to represent a setback for Block and the Sheriff’s Department. Block has publicly stated that he is convinced the department has identified the right suspects.

“Assuming it’s true, quite honestly it doesn’t sound good for the sheriff’s case,” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous. “We don’t have all the information that the Sheriff’s Department has . . . but it doesn’t sound good.”

Ever since news of the investigation surfaced last week, prosecutors and Sheriff’s Department officials have privately accused each other of leaking information about the inquiry. Friday, the source in the district attorney’s office reiterated that office’s contention that the Sheriff’s Department was responsible for last week’s leaks, and said prosecutors believe it was done to pressure them into charging Shelp and Durepo with arson.

“They shouldn’t have leaked it in the first place,” the source said. “We assume that happened because we disagreed on how to proceed. And that really may be backfiring on them.”

Sheriff’s Department officials declined to comment on the issue of the leaks and were more guarded in their assessment of the new witness’s potential significance to the case.

“He is an individual who obviously is important to our investigation, and anything he says obviously will be quite important and quite significant,” said Sheriff’s Deputy Patrick Hauser, a spokesman for the department. “Obviously the potential (to exonerate the suspects) is there. We don’t know exactly what this individual is going to say, but obviously it will have quite an important bearing on the case.”

Blakeley came forward Thursday after The Times published a photograph of a man drinking from the hose at the scene, accompanied by an article noting that the suspects believed the man in the picture could confirm their version of events. Friends recognized the person in the photo as Blakeley, and told him that investigators were trying to locate him.

“Our investigators are pretty sure” that Blakeley is the person in the photograph, Block said. “It was the photograph that caused him to come forward. Someone who saw the photo in the paper recognized it was him.”

According to sources familiar with the probe, investigators have asked Blakeley not to grant additional interviews, frustrating a horde of reporters who gathered outside his home in Agoura Hills. More than a dozen reporters and camera crews staked out the block where Blakeley lives, hounding neighbors for interviews and hoping for an appearance by the suddenly famous contractor.

Investigators want Blakeley to lead them through a re-enactment of his actions on the day the fire broke out, and sources close to the probe said they expect that to happen within a few days. That re-enactment may help clear up exactly when Blakeley first saw Shelp and Durepo and what he saw them doing--key issues in the case.

In his interview with The Times, Blakeley said he was driving from Los Angeles International Airport to Agoura Hills when he saw the first signs of fire on a hillside above Old Topanga Canyon Road. Blakeley said he stopped, and three to five minutes later, two young men pulled up behind him.

According to Blakeley, the two men were trying to battle the fire and had a garden hose in the back of their truck. They could not attach the hose to a nearby fire hydrant until Blakeley, who works in underground contracting, produced a special fixture.

“These two young fellows came up behind me,” he said. “I happened to have the adapter.”

Blakeley said he stayed at the scene for about 45 minutes. For that entire time, he said, Shelp and Durepo appeared to be helping.

In a meeting with reporters Friday morning, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti said he expects investigators from his office to question Blakeley as soon as it can be arranged.

Garcetti downplayed Blakeley’s potential significance to the case, noting that investigators will not know how important he is until they have a chance to interview him. The significance of any statement Blakeley makes to authorities, Garcetti added, will be based on what he tells investigators and how that fits into what they know.

“He may turn out to be a very important witness,” Garcetti said, “or he may turn out to be marginal.”

The emergence of Blakeley came as friends and firefighters from around the Southland have quietly been rallying to help Shelp and Durepo, saying they believe in their innocence.

“All the people coming forward, it’s just unbelievable,” said Chris Keenan, who supervised both men when they worked for the La Habra Heights volunteer Fire Department. According to Keenan, firefighters and others have offered moral support and, in some cases, money to help Shelp and Durepo cover their legal bills.

Keenan said he and some of his firefighters have little to go on but their personal knowledge of the two. But he said they plan to be in the hallway of the courthouse next week when Shelp and Durepo are scheduled to appear before a grand jury to answer questions.

Neither Shelp nor Durepo was available for comment about the latest disclosures, but friends said they were relieved and pleased to learn that the man in the photograph had been identified and had come forward to bolster their account.

“They are unbelievably excited about this,” one friend of Durepo said. “They say this shows that everything they said was true.”

When another friend told Shelp that Blakeley had come forward, he said Shelp responded: “I told you so.”

Times staff writers Abigail Goldman, Robert J. Lopez, Kenneth Reich and Andrea Ford contributed to this story.