© Photo: Stan Lim, The Press-Enterprise, via AP
Rickie Lee Fowler, 31, sits in a Southern California courtroom before being sentenced to death Monday for a 2003 wildfire that killed five via heart attacks.
Rickie Lee Fowler, 31, sits in a Southern California courtroom before being sentenced to death Monday for a 2003 wildfire that killed five via heart attacks.
Following a jury's recommendation, a California judge Monday sentenced a prison rapist to death for starting a massive 2003 wildfire that caused five fatal heart attacks, which jurors decided was murder.
Rickie Lee Fowler, 31, was convicted in August of first-degree murder and arson for tossing a road flare into bone-dry brush above San Bernardino in October 2003 because his godfather had kicked him out of his house, the Riverside Press-Enterprise says.
Dubbed the Old Fire, it burned for nine days across 142 square miles in the mountains east of Los Angeles, killing five men fighting or escaping flames that destroyed more than 1,000 homes, cabins and other structures. The blaze was one of several that swept across Southern California at the time.
