Arson Suspect’s Wife Surrenders

A day after a Los Angeles County Fire Department public information officer was arrested on arson charges, his wife turned herself in Friday.

The couple are accused of setting a fire that severely damaged a house at 1541 N. Raymond Ave. in Pasadena last July.

Roland Sprewell, 37, was freed late Thursday on $50,000 bail. Judge Terry Summers released Heidi Sprewell, 36, on her own recognizance Friday. The couple will be arraigned March 7 on one count each of felony arson. The charge carries a maximum penalty of six years in prison.

Prosecutors allege that the Altadena couple set the fire after a bank refused to return a deposit on the home that they had tried to buy.

Vicki Podberesky, the Sprewells’ attorney, said that her clients, who have three children between the ages of 9 and 18, have been cooperating with authorities.

Podberesky said she believed that the county’s case was made largely on circumstantial evidence. “I’m confident that the evidence in the case will demonstrate that the Sprewells are not guilty of the charges,” she said.

The single-family home, which was vacant at the time of the fire, is owned by the Pasadena Neighborhood Housing Services, a nonprofit community redevelopment organization, and has served in the past as a private Christian academy. The building is empty, its windows boarded up, its roof charred, and a truck-sized Dumpster filled with debris a permanent fixture on the front lawn.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Foltz declined to comment on the investigation, but said his office had been working with investigators since the fire.

Because Sprewell is a former Pasadena firefighter, the Pasadena Fire Department referred the case to the Alhambra-based San Gabriel Valley Arson Explosives Task Force, a team made up of members of the Alhambra Fire Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

The Los Angeles County Fire Department confirmed Friday that it had placed Sprewell, 36, on paid administrative leave, as is the department’s policy.

He is the latest in a series of firefighters accused of arson. Earlier this month, a Los Angeles firefighter, captured after 2 1/2 years on the run, was sentenced to two years in prison for setting fire to the carport of his estranged wife’s apartment. In 1998, a former Glendale arson investigator was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for setting a fire that killed four people at a South Pasadena hardware store.