A businessman convicted of setting fire to a food truck in Kearny Mesa to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in insurance money and charitable donations was sentenced Wednesday to five years and four months in state prison.
Avonte Hartsfield, 27, was found guilty by a San Diego jury last month of setting fire to a Rollin' Roots food truck on Oct. 3, 2021, in a series of hate crimes against him. claimed to be part of it.
Hartsfield has raised about $100,000 through a GoFundMe campaign, received more than $235,000 from an insurance company and received a $20,000 donation from the Sicuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation shortly after the fire.
He was represented during the trial and maintained that he had nothing to do with the fire and that he was at home at the time of the fire. He claimed that his incriminating statements on the phone with San Diego police detectives were the result of a coerced false confession.
Hartsfield said during the sentencing hearing that he plans to appeal the conviction.
“I understand that the prosecution and the court want to see accountability, but I still deny that I was even at the scene,” Hartsfield said.
In arguing for a maximum term of five years and four months, Deputy District Attorney Judy Taschner said Hartsfield has shown no remorse or responsibility and that others were involved in the fire. He said he continued to insist.
“There is no one to blame in this case but him,” the prosecutor said.
Mr. Taschner also accused Mr. Hartsfield of using a “false narrative” to elicit sympathy from donors.
“The defendant preyed on the San Diego community, the good spirit and good hearts of our community,” she said.
Hartsfield told police that his truck and office had been broken into multiple times in the days leading up to the fire, and some of his equipment had been destroyed. He also said he found a makeshift noose hanging in his office.
Taschner told jurors that surveillance footage from a business near Hartsfield's office showed he was at the scene shortly before the fire broke out.
The video does not show the kitchen truck, but it does show a man, whom police have identified as Hartsfield, walking toward the truck. A short time later, the same man returned the way he came and saw flashing lights coming from the area where the truck was parked.
NBC 7's Rory Devine reports that a local businessman who took more than $100,000 from donors after a food truck caught fire has been charged with arson.
Prosecutors said a vehicle similar to Hartsfield's was seen arriving at the scene and leaving shortly after the fire started.
During a phone conversation with SDPD Detective John Clayton, Hartsfield's account of how the fire started changed several times. The man initially told police that he parked his truck outside his office on the night of the fire and returned home the next day to find it completely burnt out.
After Clayton said Hartsfield was seen on the surveillance footage, Hartsfield returned to his office to check on him because of a recent break-in, but no one was there, and before the fire started. I explained that I had left.
Hartsfield later revised this account, telling Clayton that during his stay he was threatened by a man with a gun, prompting him to run home.
When Clayton said he didn't believe the gunman's story, Hartsfield said the fire was actually caused by a rice cooker he had left in his truck. When the rice cooker caught fire, Hartsfield said she panicked and left.
Asked why he didn't explain the cooker first, Hartsfield said the people targeting his business would have set the truck on fire anyway, but the truck fire prompted police to investigate the fire. He said he was hoping it would encourage him to do so. -He said that Insu and other incidents actually happened.
Mr Taschner told jurors that a fire investigation determined there was no possibility that the fire could have started in the rice cooker as described. He also said Hartsfield conducted a series of Internet searches leading up to the fire, including other searches related to car explosions and burning items.
