Seven Cars Destroyed In a Fire Lit By Alleged Stalker at Anime Los Angeles
In a shocking turn of events, seven cars were set ablaze at Anime Los Angeles this last weekend. A man allegedly poured cans of gasoline over an cosplayer’s parked car, and then was witnessed lighting the vehicle on fire with a lighter. The fire then spread to adjacent vehicles.
Kotaku confirmed additional details:
That car belonged to cosplayer Julia Moreno Jenkins, who says her vehicle was “targeted and set on fire by an obsessed stalker”. Once it was in flames, the fire then spread to nearby cars. As a precaution, the hotel was evacuated. […] Jenkins tells Kotaku the suspect—already known to her—has now been arrested after she and her husband were able to identify him on the hotel’s CCTV footage.
For now, a GoFundMe has been started to replace Moreno Jenkins’s car.
The police, investigating the incident, have reportedly arrested Matthew Masumi Toyotome, 27, of Riverside, CA in connection to the fires. When speaking with the Daily bulletin, Lt. William Russell of the Ontario Police Department stated that Toyotone “intentionally lit [Jenkins’s] car on fire.”
Via ABC 7, Kotaku and Daily Bulletin
Hi! I was at ALA this year and while I was not staying at the hotel (I was staying at the Motel 6) across the street. I knew of a couple of friends who were affected by this (more like being evacuated). I have been keeping up to date with this incident and poking my head in whatever court documents that are made available online via San Bernardino court case locator (it’s all public record anyways).
So it turns out that the perpetrator Toyotome has been found unfit to stand trial and will be released the board of mental health here in California on the 10th of next month. I was hoping that he would stand trial for this, the damage to those cars was insane and he could have killed someone. But being placed in a mental institution is some small justice, but not a whole lot…