LAKEPORT, Calif. – On Friday, the preliminary hearing of the man accused of setting the Clayton fire and a host of other fires in 2015 and 2016 wrapped up another week with testimony from three investigators.
The preliminary hearing for Damin Anthony Pashilk, 43, of Clearlake entered its eighth day on Friday.
He’s charged with 23 counts for setting the Clayton fire in August 2016 and 15 other fires between July of 2015 and August of 2016, as well as an attempted start of a 17th that self-extinguished.
Branden Smith, a Cal Fire battalion chief and law enforcement officer who participated in the surveillance of Pashilk in the summers of 2015 and 2016, returned to the stand after having given testimony earlier in the week.
Smith had been involved in placing GPS trackers on a green Subaru station wagon and a silver Chrysler Sebring that Pashilk had been known to drive in 2015 and 2016, respectively.
The tracker, which Cal Fire received clearance to use through a search warrant, needed to be replaced on a regular basis due to battery life. Smith said the trackers were placed or swapped out while the Subaru was parked at Twin Pine Casino in Middletown, and on the Chrysler while it was parked in front of Pashilk’s Koloko Street home in Clearlake.
Smith said the surveillance team used both visual observation and the GPS tracker’s Web-based tracking program to follow Pashilk’s movements. The days could be long and uneventful while waiting for Pashilk’s vehicle to move, and then the officers assigned would coordinate to follow him, sometimes for hours on back roads.
Smith said that, based on his past work in investigating arsons, Pashilk’s driving pattern had significance, as Smith has learned that those who intentionally set fires tend to scout or drive specific routes looking for a location to ignite a wildland fire. On that day, the opportunity didn’t appear to have presented itself.
However, on Aug. 25, 2015, the day the Arrowhead fire burned in Clearlake, Smith said he tracked Pashilk in his green Subaru toward the area of Arrowhead and Eastlake Drive. When Smith followed Pashilk’s route in reverse, he found a small fire on the south side of Eastlake Drive where the GPS showed Pashilk’s car had just been.
The fire was 10 feet by 10 feet at that point. Smith notified other surveillance officers then called 911 shortly before 4 p.m.
Smith said he had tracked Pashilk in that same area on Aug. 20 and 23, 2015.
The following summer, on July 23, 2016, the Western fire burned on Western Mine Road. The following month, on Aug. 18 – three days after Pashilk’s arrest – Smith interviewed a resident of Western Mine Road who had made a report to the the arson tipline about seeing a vehicle like Pashilk’s silver Chrysler Sebring driving by at a high rate of speed at about the time the fire started.
On Aug. 4, 2016, Smith again was again surveilling Pashilk, who drive from Clearlake to Lower Lake, turned onto Morgan Valley Road, to Berryessa Knoxville Road and then on to Pope Valley and Middletown to Twin Pine Casino. Smith said no fires were found along that route.
On Aug. 7, 2017, Smith was following Pashilk when the GPS tracker showed he turned onto a dirt road near Lower Lake before taking off. Smith saw a fire where Pashilk had stopped and went to photograph and report it. He said a man stopped and began trying to put out the fire, which Smith stopped him from doing, explaining that it had a slow rate of spread and it was more important to preserve the evidence.
Smith also was first on scene of a fire he discovered on Aug. 9, 2016, after he went to check an area on Seigler Canyon Road where the GPS tracker had shown Pashilk has having stopped for a few seconds.
On Aug. 13, 2016, the day the Clayton fire started, the tracker showed that Pashilk’s Chrysler had been on Clayton Creek Road for about a minute and a half just before 5 p.m., which is the time the fire is reported to have begun.
Smith said he followed Pashilk to the Jack in the Box parking lot in Clearlake where he was seen with a woman, watching the fire, a short time after he left the scene of the fire.
At about 7 p.m. that day, Smith said he saw and spoke to Pashilk and the woman on a frontage road a few hundred yards from the Clayton fire. Smith, who was posing as a freelance photographer, asked them if they lived nearby and they said yes, which Smith knew wasn’t true.
After Pashilk was arrested for driving on a suspended license on Aug. 15, 2016, Smith and another Cal Fire officer were responsible for searching the Chrysler at the Clearlake Police Department. They seized evidence, which they photographed, cataloged and packaged.
Items taken for evidence included a meth pipe with white residue inside, paper towels, whole and torn paper napkins, marijuana joints, two lighters, burned and unburned paper matches, a torn paper cup, miscellaneous paper and plastic materials, cigarette papers and binoculars.
Smith said the paper products found can be used for setting fires. He added that he's arrested arsonists in the past who were using binoculars to watch the fires they set.
The next day, Smith interviewed the woman who Pashilk had been seen with and who lived at the same property. She said Pashilk had taken her to look at fires, but didn’t explain which ones. She also was the Chrysler’s registered owner, telling Smith Pashilk had bought it for her but drove it more than she did.
Jason Cox, a district attorney’s investigator, also testified on Friday. He conducted mapping, video sequencing and followup interviews for the investigation.
In September 2015, he contacted a 9-year-old girl and her family regarding a fire on Woodland Drive in Clearlake on Aug. 13, 2015. The girl initially had been interviewed by a Cal Fire officer on the day of the fire, and Cox conducted a followup interview with her and her parents.
The girl said she was in her front yard, facing Woodland Drive, when she saw a vehicle parked in a turnout across the street. She said she saw an item dropped from the vehicle before it left, and then the fire started.
Cox said the girl showed him where she was standing and were the fire started, about 100 feet apart. He also showed her pictures of cars – including Pashilk’s Subaru – and she said Pashilk’s car was similar to the one she saw, although she thought the windows were darker.
He also followed up with the woman on Western Mine Road who saw a silver car leaving the area at about the time the fire started there on July 23, 2016, and did a video recreation on Sulphur Bank Drive in an area where a Cal Fire officer reported seeing Pashilk’s Chrysler shortly before a small wildland fire was found.
During his testimony Cox showed videos of Pashilk’s Chrysler in the area of the North Branch fire on July 29, 2016, near Clearlake.
The last testimony of the day came from Cal Fire Deputy Chief James Engel, who has sat alongside Chief Deputy District Attorney Rich Hinchcliff at the prosecution table throughout the preliminary hearing.
Engel oversaw the investigation of the series of fires in eastern Lake County in 2015 and 2016 that Pashilk is charged with setting.
After Pashilk’s Subaru was seen numerous times on surveillance cameras near fires, Engel wrote the search warrant – signed mid-August 2015 – for Cal Fire to use the GPS tracker.
Engel said the investigation was named “Kiko,” a name assigned to it that was drawn from a random bank of names that Cal Fire establishes each year to give to criminal investigations.
Testimony will continue on Wednesday.
Email Elizabeth Larson at elarson@lakeconews.com. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
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