A man accused of setting fire to playground equipment at a Windsor park this past week was the first to report the fire, telling police he noticed it while walking home from a gas station, according to an affidavit for his arrest.
Joshua Davis, 25, was arrested in the early morning hours of May 2, after police say they found soot matching the fire on the bottom of his slippers and a lighter in his pocket after he became confrontational with officers at the scene of the fire, police said.
Just before 3 a.m. May 2, Windsor police received reports of a fire at the Covenant Park playground, 1401 Fernwood Drive.
The first caller — identified as Davis — said he was out on a walk when he saw the blaze — describing it as reaching as high as 30 feet in the air.
Police said, when they arrived, they approached a sergeant with his hands in the air. Police say he told them that he was on a walk after getting off his shift at a convenience store, but couldn’t specify which store, according to the affidavit.
Police said Davis was taken into custody after he became combative, started yelling and balling up his fists while speaking with the sergeant.
Police said, when searching him, they found a lighter in his pocket, according to the affidavit. Police said he told them that he was smoking a cigarette, but that he didn’t know where his cigarettes went.
Officers canvassing the area found a bag of clothes — as well as a packet of cigarettes hidden — in a bush toward where police said Davis was when they arrived, according to the affidavit. Police said the clothes found in the bag matched Davis’s size.
Davis was also wearing a pair of slippers that police said had black soot on the bottoms and smelled like the melted playground equipment from the scene of the fire, according to police.
Police said, once Davis was at the Windsor police department, he originally didn’t want to speak to a detective, but when the detective tried to clarify something, he then said he would give any information they asked for, according to the affidavit.
He said he had walked to a separate convenience store on Main Street to buy alcohol and nicotine vape pods. When he returned to his home on Silverwood Court, he noticed the flames at the park, he told the detective.
Police said Davis denied ever getting closer than 100 to 200 feet from the fire. When asked how the soot got on his slippers if he was never near the fire, he didn’t answer directly, instead telling police how he “didn’t understand why the fire would have happened. It was just in the air and I knew to call the police,” according to the affidavit.
Police asked him several more times in several different ways about the soot on his slippers but said he never gave a coherent answer.
Davis also denied hiding the bag of clothes or any other items in the area, according to the affidavit.
While investigating after the fire had been put out, police saw a second area on the upper part of the playground equipment where it appeared someone had attempted to start a fire, but it didn’t catch, according to the affidavit. Police said there were a pair of burnt socks and an area that had begun to melt.
The fire that fully erupted “appeared to have burned a slide or ladder,” police said. Police estimate the value of the equipment to be $100,000 to $250,000.
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