Adam Kinnard booking photo (via Anderson Police Department)
When Adam Kinnard was shown footage of himself lurking in areas where a suspected arsonist had torched a porch, garage and an RV, police in Indiana allege he became enraged and admitted he set the fires because he was “tired of all the child molesters that were out on the street.”
Anderson Police Department officers booked Kinnard, 33, on Tuesday just before noon, according to arrest records reviewed by Law&Crime.
He was seen walking the street in his pajama bottoms by police who were patrolling the area following a spate of fires that had started around dawn in three spots, according to local Fox affiliate WXIN.
Firefighters first responded to a detached garage that was engulfed in flames around 5 a.m. and then barely an hour later to a shed that was on fire roughly a half-mile away. A couple hours after that, police said firefighters were again alerted when someone’s back porch had gone up in flames less than mile from the second incident.
Police patrolling the neighborhood near the porch fire said they saw Kinnard briefly walking out from behind a person’s home and when he realized he was spotted, he took off on foot. The Goshen News reported that a school bus driver around this same time tipped off police about seeing an RV in flames and spotting a man wearing pajama bottoms and a Carhartt jacket in the vicinity.
Goshen News also reported that when police finally stopped Kinnard after seeing him walk off someone’s porch, he claimed to know the person inside. The resident later told police they did not know him. Police allege they found three lighters in Kinnard’s pockets though he had no cigarettes or anything else to smoke. They noted that his pajama bottoms had burn marks and when questioned, he told police he was out for a walk to the library, WXIN reported.
The man allegedly grew “belligerent” when questioned and again later when he was shown surveillance footage of himself in an area where fires had been set that morning. When they told Kinnard he would be arrested, he reportedly appeared ready to strike an officer at one point and began shouting that he did not know why he was being arrested when there were child molesters “on the street.”
Police said Kinnard admitted to setting fires targeting properties of people who he believed were sex offenders. He told them he was “tired of all the child molesters that were out on the street” and he used his cellphone to pull up an online list of registered sex offenders in his community
A review of the court docket in Madison County does not indicate that any formal charges have been filed yet by county prosecutors and a request for comment by Law&Crime on Friday was not immediately returned.
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