Coatesville is Burning

In 2009, there's been a rash of arsons in this small Pennsylvania town. And the fires keep happening.

by Mike Newall and Doron Taussig

Michael T. Regan

The city of Coatesville, Pa., is burning down. As far back as 2007, the Chester County Daily Local reported that officials were investigating a string of "suspicious" fires in and around this town of about 12,000. Last year there were 15 arsons here, including one that took the life of 83-year-old Irene Kempest, a Nazi war camp survivor. This year, the fires have only accelerated. There have been 23 since Jan. 1 — more than one every two days, most having begun when trash or furniture on back porches was set aflame. One fire burned down an entire block of 15 homes.

Coatesville lies in a valley about an hour's drive west of Philadelphia. Lincoln Highway runs through the center of town, a weary two-mile stretch of mostly departed commerce. Up the hills off Lincoln are streets of beat-up frame houses. On the west side of town sits the old Lukens Steel plant. Only a tenth as many people work there now as did in the 1960s, and Coatesville is home to half the Section 8 housing in Chester County. Before the fires, older residents looked at the growing drug and violence problems and talked about how things used to be different. Now younger people join in the reminiscing. Listen to Checker and his boys, who sit on a stoop on the East End while a parole officer makes the rounds.

Michael T. Regan The burned-out home of Tina Bowman (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

"Coatesville's changed, man," says one.

How?

"Shit like this. The arsons."

Some in town refer to the arsonist as "he," some say "they." Theories ofwho could be responsible for the fires abound. But everyone, from a member of the street gang many suspect, to the town's last serial arsonist, who now lives in a house on the West End, insist they don't have a clue.

There is panic here. An 8 p.m. curfew has been set for those under 18.

"I started getting concerned when I saw it on CNN," says Coatesville High School freshman Kiarra Hicks, taking a break from ROTC marching practice in the school parking lot.

A state of emergency has been declared. Federal agents have been called in. Residents line up outside City Hall to buy motion sensors, and go to sleep with their bags packed and 12-gauges loaded. Officials are flustered.

"It's extremely frustrating that with all the effort we put out there, the fires continue," says Chester County District Attorney Joseph Carroll.

"It doesn't make sense," says firefighter Earl Taylor, walking door to door, handing out smoke detectors. Taylor notes that authorities quickly apprehended teenagers in nearby Downingtown who were torching cars. "Them kids left footprints in snow," he says. "There aren't any footprints in the snow here."

At night, families kneel down together, praying the Lord will change the arsonist's heart. The houses of worship are full. At Tabernacle Baptist Church, Pastor Montez Jones pleads: "Give us our stuff back. Give us our community back. Give us our neighborhood back. Jesus, we need you. It's an emergency, Lord. Jesus Christ, we need you."

The strange thing is, police have made several arrests connected to the 2008 arsons. A 17-year-old junior firefighter was arrested for allegedly starting a fire in an unoccupied garage, and 23-year-old Leroy McWilliams was arrested for torching rowhomes on a crumbling sliver of a street in the drug-infested East End. (At his arraignment, when the judge announced his $150,000 bail, McWilliams sighed, and said, "I don't even know where I can get that money.") George Donkewicz, 22, was arrested for the fire that killed Kempest. Police caught him two days later, near dawn, walking home along Lincoln Highway after a surveillance camera spotted him near a trash can fire on Kempest's block.

Police say Donkewicz confessed to both fires. At his arraignment, Donkewicz told the judge, "I've been hearing voices and [having] thoughts of killing myself. If that should be addressed, I don't know, I just thought I'd say it." Then he turned to his mother: "They said they have me on camera. I did one of [the fires]. They brainwashed me and manipulated me."

Donkewicz is a heavyset high school dropout with a shaved head. He lives with his mother in a powder-blue converted trailer on the outskirts of Coatesville. Ronald Palmer lives next door.

"He's strange," says Palmer. "Ambulances be up and leave and he's still there — that happened all the time." Palmer says Donkewicz would refuse to get in the ambulance. "I guess he don't take his medication."

Authorities say Donkewicz and McWilliams know each other, but that there's no connection between their criminal activities (neither knew the junior firefighter). They've both been in custody since December.

Donkewicz's mother, Alicia Twyman, stands in the doorway of her trailer. Her hair is wet. "Now's not a good time," she says, "I have an appointment downtown. One thing I will say, ever since my son George's arrest, the fires have really taken off."

The first fire of 2009 took place on New Year's Day, at around 9:30 p.m. Sheri Posnanski was sitting in the living room of her tiny house at the end of Charles Street, watching television while her 14-year-old son, Corey, listened to his iPod. She heard a pop outside, like something knocking against the wall. Then Henry, her Jack Russell, began barking — not a frantic bark, but a yippy bark, like something was bothering him. A neighbor banged on her front door.

"Corey, get the hell out," she yelled.

She saw flames rising from the children's backyard clubhouse. Her father and brother had built it for Corey and his sister, Mindy, as a play space. There was a couch, a table and posters on the wall. Mindy died in 2007 from illness, and it was only recently that Corey began spending time in the clubhouse again. Posnanski worried that the flames would spread from the clubhouse to her back bedroom, where she stored all of Mindy's possessions.

Two weeks and nine fires later, Amarliano Fields got to his barber shop on Lincoln at 4:31 a.m. His first customer was already in the chair when a policeman ran by the window. Fields went outside and saw a house burning in the back. He cut through the alley to alert the people who live above his shop, then came up front and saw that two homes across the highway were also now ablaze.

His customer hurried toward him, carrying a little girl in his arms, and an old man with no shoes on was dangling from an attic window.

"I was stunned for a hot second," says Fields.

It seems likely that whoever set the first fire cut through the alley beside the barbershop, then crossed the street and set the second one. Fields probably just missed the arsonist in the alley.

The next weekend, Brandon Thomas was home alone when he smelled smoke. His mother, Janie, was out with her boyfriend. The houses next door were on fire and the flames were spreading. He ran into the street in boxers and a zip-up sweatshirt. A neighbor gave him a pair of blue fuzzy girl slippers. Brandon is 16, and an honor student at Coatesville High. He wants to go to college. It's been a rough year, though, with the passing of his aunt, uncle and grandmother.

Brandon stood outside in the chaos: the arriving firetrucks, the panicked and cursing neighbors, the whole block of Fleetwood Street now in flames. He didn't want to watch his stuff burn anymore, so he began to walk Lincoln Highway toward the city line. A cop stopped him.

"I didn't start the fire, I was in the fire," he told them. "I just want to get out of town."

By: Michael T. Regan Lincoln Highway in downtown Coatesville. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Greg DePedro, owner of the Coatesville Flower Shop, was on a cruise with his wife, Dorrie, when Headline News Network teased a segment about a serial arsonist burning down a whole block in a Pennsylvania town.

"It can't be," he said.

Coatesville was in crisis. The regularly scheduled City Council meeting, held in a City Hall conference room, was overrun by frantic citizens. A community meeting was scheduled for two days later, at Gordon Elementary, and 400 people showed up. They were briefed on the community's impressive relief efforts, but told very little about the investigation — "I'm proceeding tonight with the assumption that the arsonist or arsonists are here in this room," said District Attorney Carroll. Later, Police Chief William Matthews, who had recently come under fire for lacking certification to carry a gun, asked residents to leave their outside lights on, clear porches of debris and refrain from forming vigilante groups.

"This is not the time to be walking around people's yards at night," he said.

Both the FBI and ATF are now involved in the investigation, along with two dozen state troopers and all 34 members of the Coatesville police.

The public face of the besieged city is Council President Martin Eggleston, the highest-ranking official in Coatesville. Eggleston makes a monthly stipend of $150 for his volunteer position. A few days after the meeting, Eggleston sits in a City Hall conference room with a cell phone to his ear.

"What can I do for you — or should I say, what can you do for me?" he says to an aide from U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter's office.

Eggleston is a hulking giant, well over 6 foot 6, and is a local basketball hero who played several seasons of pro ball in Europe before returning home. He is not accustomed to speaking to senators' aides.

Many have criticized the city leadership's reaction to the arson crisis, calling it slow and confused. Eggleston dismisses these complaints, saying, "If you ask people what we should be doing, I don't think they could give you an answer."

What people will give you is theories. There's the theory of the disgruntled fireman, of the laid-off city worker, of the college kids playing "Internet games" where points are earned for burning houses. Some people believe the fires are motivated by greed, but there's no evidence of any patterns in ownership or insurance benefits.

Still, says Crosby Wood, a real estate developer, sitting in his red pickup outside the Rainbow Pizzeria, if you wanted to burn down your house, "You have a better chance of getting away with insurance fraud now."

Tina Bowman thinks she knows who burned her and her four children out of their house on Church Street. She was asleep when someone moved her trash cans against her back fence and set them on fire. Though she believes there's a serial arsonist somewhere in town, she thinks her fire was set by a woman she fought with over a man. "I was pissed the fuck off when I saw the flames," says Bowman, standing in the burned-out shell of her son's roofless bedroom, where a Scarface poster still hangs on the wall.

Later in the afternoon, she runs into her rival at the District Court on Lincoln Highway.

"Not much to look at," Bowman declares, standing just a few feet away from a thin woman with red-dyed braids.

"You the one who got your house burnt down, bitch," the woman replies. "You the one homeless."

Just as Bowman views her fire through the prism of her feud, others see the arsons through the lens of the town's old wounds. Standing in a crowd watching an afternoon false alarm at St. Stanislaus School (black smoke was coming out of the chimney), Ann Orshesky describes how Coatesville's few housing projects — "The Projects on the Hill" — were shut down in the 1990s.

"The projects were terrible, but they were confined," says Orshesky, a polite woman in a red down coat who looks to be in her mid-30s. "After they shut them down, the people who didn't know how to live right spread into town. Historically, the East End was always tough. Now, the West End, too."

Orshesky now lives in nearby Christiana, but is in Coatesville today packing up her mother's house, which burnt a few weeks earlier when the next door neighbor's house was set ablaze. She thinks the fires could be the work of someone upset about what happened to the town.

There do not, however, seem to be any patterns among the race or other characteristics of the victims.

"These appear to be crimes of opportunity," says District Attorney Carroll. "They don't seem to be victim-directed."

The most common theory being floated is that the fires are being set by gangs, as an initiation rite. The presence of nationally known gangs in Coatesville is small. In recent years, some Blood graffiti has popped up, and with the growing number of Mexicans in town there's a larger presence of SUR-13. More prevalent are crews of local kids who hang out together and give themselves names. The Dope Boys are black kids, mostly in high school. M-Team is both black and white. Touch Money is also black, and got into a big brawl with the Dope Boys at Coatesville High last week. The Goonies are said to have more than 400 members. They are older, and supposedly run a lot of the corners.

The gang mentioned most in relation to the arsons is KOD, or Kids of Destruction. In January a local newspaper quoted a high school student saying "she hears things" at school about KOD's involvement. A lot of people, from Web site commenters to citizens on the street, share her suspicions. The gang has been a town nuisance for several years.

Joseph Slaymaker was a member of KOD. The 19-year-old returned home to Coatesville in mid-January after serving five months for beating a 21-year-old man who "tried to touch" his 14-year-old sister.

"The cops are looking at KOD," he says after being contacted via MySpace, "but they're going the wrong way of where they want to be."

"KOD is extinct," he says.

The gang started as a BMX group, he explains. They would ride the bike jumps in Downingtown or at Philadelphia's FDR Park. Soon, KOD, which Slaymaker estimates numbered about 200 kids at its height a few summer ago (the gang included members from outside Coatesville), moved on to robbing and beating people up.

"Most of the guys are in jail now," he says.

He says they're not there for arson.

"Burglary, simple assault, stealing bikes and cars, yes," says Slaymaker. "Arson, no."

There were no initiation rites, he adds.

"We were about money," he says. And starting fires, he says, doesn't get you money.

Slaymaker thinks people started suspecting KOD after a house tagged with KOD graffiti burnt down. He says it was a coincidence. Plus, a KOD friend lost his home in the Fleetwood Street fire.

As part of his parole, Slaymaker attends group meetings for his marijuana use. "I hear the KOD rumors at the meetings and I'm tired of it," he says. "I believe it's someone real sick doing this. I mean, go out and start a campfire if you need to get off."

At this stage, authorities aren't ruling anything out — including the possibility that more than one of the theories is accurate, and that there are several, unaffiliated arsonists. To some people, the copycat theory is the most frightening of all. It means there are numerous people in Coatesville capable of this destruction.

HALF OFF DEPOT

Why live life at full price?

When the fires started, Matt Juhas' father asked him if he was lighting them. Juhas said no, and eventually his father stopped asking.

Juhas started setting fires after graduating high school. He set them all over Coatesville, in trash cans, sheds and garages, over a stretch of 366 days from 2003 to 2004. He went to jail for 22 months, coming home shortly before the new string of fires began. He says he has nothing to do with them.

We meet Juhas in an Applebee's just outside town, and ask him why he set his fires.

"Because there's no evidence," he says. "The fire burns it up.

"All you need is a lighter."

Juhas works as a mason now. He has a thick build and big hands and forearms. He speaks quietly. It's lunch, and he's eating a shrimp-covered steak.

He does not explain why he felt compelled to commit crimes in the first place — he seems detached from his own motives. When pressed, he says he was in his "mischief stage," and that he had a rough childhood: His mother left when he was a teenager without giving much of a reason.

"Some people looked at what I did as a frustration thing," he says.

What he does explain is that he enjoyed the aftermath of the fires — the running home and waiting for the sirens.

"You think, it's working, it's working," he says. "I guess you could call it a rush. It's just a trash can fire, but then there's four firetrucks and all these police." Juhas found it funny when the local media started covering his spree.

"They were telling everyone to watch their backyards. I got a kick out of that."

His last fire he set for personal reasons, in the shed of a guy who'd cost him some money. The fire spread to a nearby garage, and things got out of hand. "I should've known it would do that," he recalls. "Shit was blowing up." He got a job at BJ's shortly thereafter, and stopped setting fires. "I quit the shit," he says. But soon the older brother of a friend told the cops about him. He estimates that about 15 people knew it was him committing the arsons. He says he was charged for a couple of fires he didn't have anything to do with.

"It doesn't matter," he says.

Though he never went to rehab for arson — just anger management classes — Juhas says he can't afford to set fires anymore.

"Fifteen years probation and $150,000 restitution will discourage you from doing a lot of things," he says. He draws a distinction between the fires he set and these new ones. "I never did a house or a porch. I didn't want to hurt anyone," he says.

The police didn't come to talk to him until two weeks ago. "Frankly, I was surprised it took them so long," he says. It was a short conversation. He says they never asked him for an alibi.

"The cops know me, they know my car," he says. "They might even have bugged my car. Put a GPS thing to see if I've been at any of the fires."

"I don't know if I'm a suspect," he adds, "but my name is on that board, probably at the top."

Neither the District Attorney nor ATF will comment on whether Juhas is a suspect. Sgt. James Audette of the Coatesville police, standing on Charles Street during a patrol, chuckles at the mention of the former arsonist's name.

"We keep tabs on him," he shrugs.

Whoever's doing this, Juhas says, will keep setting fires until they're caught. "It's a crime of opportunity," he says. "Like in golf. If the wind's right, if the angle's right, you get a good hit."

Juhas says he hopes he isn't the motivation for the recent arsons. "I hope I didn't make anyone act on their ideas of starting fires. I did something Coatesville never heard of when I started my fires. Now it's been happening ever since."

By: Michael T. Regan Falaq Lucas and her daughter. Lucas thinks the Coatesville fires were inevitable.

Falaq Lucas sits on the couch of her modest house in the East End. Her four kids are playing in the next room. Outside, the sun is setting. "It sounds weird when I tell people this," she says, "but sometimes, I know things before others do. I see the spiritual beneath the physical."

When they caught Donkewicz, the kid hearing voices who allegedly set some of the West End fires, she felt no relief.

"I knew something else was going on," she says. "Something bigger."

Falaq doesn't think it matters who is setting the fires. She sees the arsonist, or arsonists, as a means to an end. She calls her hometown a sad, hurt place — and the fires a manifestation of its pain.

Until recently, Falaq ran a day care center. She had to shut down when some of the mothers got laid off. Struggling to find work, she reached out to various churches and charities, everyone but the welfare system, for help. But she couldn't get any until she produced an eviction notice — physical proof of her desperation. Coatesville, she says, has tolerated its own desperation — the drugs, the shootings, the decay — for a long time. The families who've been burned out didn't deserve it, of course. But spiritually, she wonders if the town needed this.

"Something was coming in Coatesville," she says, "some release of tension, building to this. Tension manifests into fire."

By: Michael T. Regan Charles Thomas, with his Dale Earnhardt memorial tractor (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

"This is a season of change," she says. "But sometimes change does not come so easy."

Throughout Coatesville, residents are struggling with the change the flames have wrought.

The screen door slams behind Charles Edward Brown Thomas, who lives at 370 Fleetwood St. with his girlfriend, Geneva, her daughter, Britney, and their cat, Trouble. Thomas was sleeping when he heard the commotion of the fire. He figured it was a fight. Standing outside his badly burned house, he drops some beer cans in the snow, and squints from the sun. "I'm finished talking to people," he says. "This is just too depressing for me. I'm sorry."

Thomas is a mechanic, and he built a racing tractor some years ago in honor of late Nascar legend Dale Earnhardt. It was a way to work through his hero's death. "I'll show it to you," he says.

It took Thomas three and a half years to build the tractor. He took apart three other tractors in the process.

The door of Thomas' shed is wedged into the thick ice, so Thomas picks up a metal shovel, lifts it above his shoulders and slams it down again and again, making long, jagged slits in the ice.

"This tractor was my life," he says, catching his breath. "Every day, I was out here tinkering with it."

He kicks at the snow. The door gives.

The tractor is about the size of a motorcycle. It's navy blue, and has Earnhardt's racing number 3 emblazoned on the side.

"This is my pride and joy," says Thomas. "I would back this out and do wheel-stands up and down the street. Everybody would come out on their porches to watch."

Thomas is asked if he and his girlfriend will rebuild their home.

"We'll rebuild," he says without hesitation. Then he kneels down and begins tinkering with the tractor.

"I got to fix this battery," he says.

On Charles Street, Sheri Posnanski stops in to see how the workmen are progressing with the damage incurred in her New Year's fire. She's just finished her morning shift at Target. She and her son Corey have been staying with her mother.

"The flames melted the blinds," she says, standing in her small back bedroom where she displays the zebra stuffed animals, figurines and pictures frames of her deceased daughter, Mindy. "But they never reached Mindy's things."

And Falaq removes the furniture from her front porch, as the city instructed. Then she holds a fire drill.

"Get in your beds," she tells her children. "I'll be the alarm. When I start beeping, you show me how you'll get out."

If the fire is in the hallway, she instructs, go to your bedroom window.

The kids go right for the windows on the first try.

"Mommy, mommy, we're jumping out the windows," they shout.

She calms them down and tries again. This time, she teaches them to crawl underneath smoke. She reminds them to call each other's names so no one gets left behind.

"Muffin, Lulu, come on ..." they call.

The most recent fire, as of press time, occurred last Friday evening, in the hills just south of town. It was lit beneath the back porch of a trailer home, which was laid completely to waste. Next to the burned-out porch are the homeowner's two gas tanks. Luckily, they didn't explode. There was a woman inside. She got out alive.

(mike.newall@citypaper.net)

(doron@citypaper.net)