Arsonist Potentially Responsible for Attacks against Mobile Homes in Hispanic Community, Cocoa

By Orlando Personal Injury Attorney on April 3, 2017

Mobile homes owners in Cocoa are being encouraged to stay on the lookout for an individual or individual who may be targeting these residences and burning them down. The reasons behind this caution, which comes from the Cocoa Police Department’s spokesperson, Yvonne Martinez, lie in two mobile homes that were seemingly targeted and torched over the past week. The Cocoa police described incidents in a report.

The first of the two fires happened last early in the morning of Last Thursday in the Sunrise Village mobile home park. A witness to the scene describes seeing an arch of flame headed towards the mobile home that the fire department wound up fighting to save. The individual who owned this mobile home was inside it at the time, sleeping. Due to the quick thinking of the witness and the prompt response from the fire department, no individuals were injured, however there was a not-insignificant amount of damage done to the mobile home.

The second incident took place early on Monday morning. Around 4:00am, the Cocoa police and fire department were dispatched to a mobile home located along Nomad Street, in the Sunrise Village park, only a couple blocks away from the unit which had been burning a few days previous. The call came from residents in the mobile home who had managed to suppress the flames before the authorities arrived. The four individuals living in the home state that they were asleep when the sound of a crashing window woke them. Rushing from their beds, they discovered that their front door was on fire.

When the police arrived, the four men had managed to completely eradicate the flames, however they were considerably shaken. The greatest fear now is that these two incidents are not random, but are linked together by a malicious individual who is clearly targeting a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood for reasons that are not explicitly known. Fortunately, neither of the incidents described above resulted in any injuries, however if these fires are being started intentionally, the individual responsible is attempting to cause maximum harm by starting both fires in the dead of night, while the targeted individuals are sleeping.

James O. Cunningham

Since 1977, personal injury lawyer James Cunningham has provided effective legal advocacy to people who are injured through the negligent actions of another person or entity throughout the Central Florida area. He fights to obtain recoveries for his clients’ physical and emotional pain and suffering and pursues his clients’ personal injury cases with a commitment to excellence and impeccable preparation.