SAN ANTONIO – A man accused of summoning firefighters to his Northeast Bexar County home twice this week by making bogus fire reports once started a fire in his apartment because the Spurs lost a game, according to a police report.
In the most recent case, Joseph Navarro, 38, was arrested Wednesday on two counts of making a false alarm or report.
“He claimed that there were structure fires with people trapped inside,” said Laura Jesse, a spokeswoman for Bexar County. “Fire is going to respond quickly anyway, but there's an added level of urgency if we think that people are inside.”
Firefighters with the Gardendale Volunteer Fire Department raced to an apartment complex in the 7500 block of Windsor Oaks both times, but found out there never was an emergency, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
The affidavit said that an investigator with the Bexar County Fire Marshall’s Office noticed Navarro sitting on a porch nearby, watching the scene intently. He said when he asked Navarro if he was the one who had placed the phone calls, he admitted that he had done it because he was bored, the affidavit said.
Ten years ago, Navarro was at the center of another case, also involving 911 calls and fire.
A report written by San Antonio police in June 2005 said that emergency dispatchers had received several hang up calls, prompting them to send police and firefighters to an address on Pinn Road where the calls originated.
When officers arrived around 3:30 a.m., they found several small fires inside Navarro’s apartment.
The report stated that he told police he set the fires because he was angry that the Spurs had lost a game.
Records show Navarro was given 10 years of probation in 2006. The term was set to expire in October 2016. However, after a hearing in 2010, a judge dismissed the rest of his sentence.