A feud between two Solon men escalated in October when one of them allegedly set fire to the outside of the other’s house using a beer bottle filled with gasoline, police said in a news release Thursday morning.
The man who allegedly started the fire, Randy Ruest II, 26, was charged with arson and brought to Somerset County Jail on Tuesday night, said Steve McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public of Safety, in the release.
The fire was reported Oct. 5 at a home on South Main Street and was knocked down quickly by local firefighters,
Ruest and a man living at the home, 31-year-old Thomas Roderick, had been in “a long-standing dispute since summer, that included a fight between the two men,” McCausland said, referring to an investigation by the state fire marshal’s office.
According to investigators, on Oct. 5, “Ruest walked to (Roderick’s) house with a beer bottle half-full of gasoline, lit the fire and then ran back to his own home on Pleasant St.,” McCausland said. “The fire was quickly extinguished by the Solon Fire Department with minor damage to the outside of the building.”
Ruest was arrested after being interviewed by investigators at the Solon Fire Department. His bail was set at $10,000.
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