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Did arson suspect set fire to his house to get sympathy?

James Clay gave conflicting accounts of the fire, witnesses say

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By Nancy Bowman, Staff Writer Updated 8:46 AM Thursday, September 3, 2009

TROY — Good Samaritans who stopped at James Clay’s burning house in 2007 told a jury Wednesday, Sept. 2, that he gave different accounts of what happened just before the fire.

The 42-year-old former Troy Christian school coach is on trial in Miami County Common Pleas Court on a charge of aggravated arson stemming from the Dec. 21, 2007, fire.

Prosecutors claim he set fire to his residence on Troy-Sidney Road in Piqua to gain sympathy and claim racial discrimination following an indictment handed down against him days before on a sexual battery charge.

Clay, convicted in October of having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl, is serving five years in prison.

In testimony Wednesday, several people who stopped when they saw Clay in the driveway and his house on fire described their conversations with him.

“He kept saying, ‘Look at what they did to my house,’ ” Glenna Reinhart of Troy said, noting that she saw Clay kneeling on the ground when she and husband James stopped.

James Reinhart testified that Clay said he and his children were in a back room watching a movie when they smelled gasoline.

Reinhart said Clay related to him that he told the children to get out of the house and he went into the hallway, armed with a samurai sword.

There, Reinhart testified, Clay claimed he encountered two men in black “Ninja” outfits who dropped a fireball in the hall and fled.

Ed McDermitt Jr. of Ansonia said Clay told him he had just returned home from shopping and discovered someone had been in his home, stole Christmas gifts and set fire to the house.

Matt Simmons, assistant Troy fire chief and arson investigator, said Clay told him that when he walked into the hallway, he was standing in gasoline as the fireball was thrown at him.

The investigation, though, showed that the fire, which was traced to a gas can farther down the hall, traveled in the opposite direction from where Clay said he was standing, Simmons testified.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2292 or nbowman @DaytonDailyNews.com.

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