A convicted arsonist was arrested for allegedly setting fire to an abandoned Indio strip mall early Thursday, authorities said.
Fredrick John Guerra, 40, was booked into the Riverside County jail in Indio, with bail set at $55,000, in the wake of the blaze that caused an estimated $125,000 in damage, according to Jody Hagemann of the Riverside County Fire Department.
The fire started just after 3 a.m. in the 10,000-square-foot structure in the 81700 block of Avenue 46. Four dozen firefighters contained the flames by 3:53 a.m., Hagemann said. No one was injured.
Riverside County court documents show that Guerra pleaded guilty in 2014 to arson of a non-dwelling and was sentenced to eight years in state prison, though he’d accumulated nearly three years of credit for time served at the time of sentencing.
Guerra was also charged with arson causing great bodily injury and burglary, but those counts were dismissed as part of a plea agreement, according to court documents. Further details on the case were not immediately available.