Update: Police to release photo of suspect in UC van arson

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Oct 4, 2007 | by William Brand

There's been a development today in the torching of a UC Berkeley police van Thursday morning.

A UC Berkeley police official said this afternoon that they are planning to release a video from a surveillance camera and a flier with a photo from the recording of a man purchasing a small amount of gasoline at a gas station near campus about an hour before the van was burned.

"The person in the video is someone we want to talk to," Assistant UC Berkeley Police Chief Mitch Celaya said. "We're printing up fliers and taking them up to the tree-sitters site to see if anyone knows him," Celaya said.

"The only reason we're doing that is that the person of interest who were interviewing was associated with that group," he said, That man, who has an arrest record from tree-sitting activity and who, police said, made a threat, has been released without charge, Celaya said.

He said the gasoline purchase was made at the Berkeley Touchless Car Wash, 2176 Kittredge St., which is at the west end of the Berkeley campus, about four blocks from Sproul Hall where the van was set on fire.

Someone tossed a flammable liquid on the rear of the van early Thursday morning charring the outside and setting the interior on fire.

Agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms obtained some of the liquid and it is being examined, Celaya said.

A passerby reported the van on fire at 5:52 a.m. Thursday. It was parked on Barrows Lane on the east side of Sproul Hall, which houses the UC Berkeley police department.