Several fires broke out at an Ontario, California, mall on Friday, and police arrested a man accused of arson and are looking into whether the incident has any connection to Tuesday’s warehouse fire, also in the San Bernardino County city.
No civilians were hurt, the Ontario Police Department said, though an officer suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
The fires started at Mills Mall in Ontario, 38 miles east of Los Angeles, at 10:30 a.m.
The people who reported the blaze accused a man with a lighter and backpack of committing arson inside the mall, police said.
Police arrived and had to use force to take suspect Luis Javier Gallegos Jr., 28, into custody.
At the same time, firefighters evacuated the mall and put out the fires.
The injured officer was treated and released, as was Mr. Gallegos, police said. Mr. Gallegos was then taken back into custody and charged with felony arson.
The mall reopened at around 6:30 p.m., police said on social media.
The Ontario Police Department said it’s looking into a possible motive and whether the incident is related to the fire Tuesday at a warehouse full of Kimberly-Clark paper goods elsewhere in Ontario.
Chamel Abdulkarim, 29, an employee of the logistics company that operates the warehouse, was charged with starting that fire.
A social media video shows a person lighting a pallet of paper towels on fire and saying, “All you had to do was pay us enough to live.”
Prosecutors allege that Mr. Abdulkarim is the person in the video, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California said. In addition to federal arson charges, he’s facing prosecution from the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office.
