Feeling Burned

Weeks after firefighters doused blazes across Greenwood, the charred
sites of almost a dozen arsons still pock the North Seattle
neighborhood. Four restaurants, a coffeehouse, a theater, and a guitar
shop have closed their doors. Several buildings are reduced to cinder.
Now some business owners and neighbors are wondering if some of the
damage could have been prevented.

Kevin Todd Swalwell has been held in the King County Jail, charged
with the crimes, since his arrest on November 13. He is scheduled for
an arraignment hearing on December 1, facing 11 felony counts of arson
and one count of burglary. However, court documents show that police
had clues as early as this summer that Swalwell—a neighborhood
fixture with a criminal record as a repeat arsonist—was the
culprit.

Records filed in King County Superior Court say that Swalwell, 46,
was a suspect in the investigation and had been identified “at the
scene of at least four of the fires.” Swalwell’s criminal record also
shows he was convicted of five counts of arson in 1995, one count of
arson in 1983, and other crimes, including theft.

“If he had been caught earlier, my restaurant would be open and we
wouldn’t have gone through all this construction and had the time
loss,” says Timur Leno, owner of the restaurant Olive You, which was
struck on November 9. He’s not blaming the police but, he says, “They
had all the information on him and he slipped into the cracks and was
not caught. It’s just strange. The police must explain to us: How could
this happen?”

“I think [the investigators] should’ve put emphasis on him sooner,”
says Malka Aust, co-owner of Cobblestone Used Furniture on Greenwood
Avenue North. Rosewood Guitar, next door to her business, was burned in
early November. “They could have prevented the Rosewood and Olive You
fires,” she says.

At a Seattle Police Department (SPD) press conference on the
afternoon of Swalwell’s arrest, a reporter asked how long investigators
have been watching Swalwell.

“We received a tip early on in our task force and, uh, actually I
can’t comment much further about that,” said Deputy Chief Clark
Kimerer. He added, “I hope you appreciate that our main motive is to
build the best possible case. And at this point, some of the
information that I think you rightfully are seeking is pretty integral
to building that case. As we get more information, we’re going to
provide it to you promptly.”

Police apparently got their first clues that Swalwell may have been
involved this August. In a house fire on August 13, Carlos Salmeron
suffered burns to over 70 percent of his body and his home sustained
$170,000 in damage. Investigators determined the fire was started by a
“hand-held flame” and fueled by the contents of Salmeron’s own
recycling bin. The next day, a neighbor found a container of lighter
fluid when she was taking out the trash. She called police, who checked
the container for fingerprints. “This palm print was later matched to
the known prints of the defendant, Kevin Swalwell,” say King County
Superior Court records. However, the report doesn’t indicate when the
fingerprint match was made, but, presumably, police would have also had
Swalwell’s prints on file; he was arrested two times earlier in 2009,
according to online King County Correctional Facility records.

“After the first three buildings went, why weren’t there cops at
every corner?” asks Wade Kipling, a sales associate at Insurrection
Apparel & Boots, one of the Greenwood businesses that escaped the
arson spree.

Catching Swalwell may have been feasible for police looking for him
in Greenwood. Beverly Howard, a manager of Romio’s Pizza and Pasta,
which sustained $200,000 in water damage when firefighters drowned the
blaze there, says Swalwell repeatedly came in to use the bathroom and
he came in with another homeless man a few days before the fire. “I saw
him a few times,” she says. “He was usually talking to himself,
flailing his arms, and smoking at the same time.” Howard said it is
common knowledge among Greenwood neighbors that Swalwell and other
homeless people often slept behind the shuttered McDonald’s, within a
couple blocks of the majority of the crime scenes. Swalwell also
received his mail, under his real name, at the Ballard Food Bank, two
miles away.

It’s unclear when, exactly, Swalwell became a suspect in the arsons.
Police did not respond to numerous requests to comment or answer
questions about when police first identified him at the arson scenes or
linked him to the crimes.

However, prosecutors allege that Swalwell committed several more
arson attacks after police found his palm print on the
lighter-­fluid container. Most damaging was the Green Bean Coffee
House and three adjacent businesses, which prosecutors say suffered $2
million in damage on October 23.

Summer Mohrlang, manager of the Green Bean, says there may have been
more police presence than residents realize. “You wouldn’t have noticed
them because a lot of them were in plainclothes,” she says. “I will say
that I’ve had a really wonderful experience working with them. I have
total confidence that they did a really thorough job.”

Seven days after the Green Bean Coffee House fire, a surveillance
camera at the local Bank of America recorded Swalwell smearing his
stool across an ATM keyboard, says branch manager Wen Lin. The SPD
investigated the incident the next day but didn’t ask for the tapes in
relation to the arson case until November 16, after Swalwell was in
custody, court records show. In the weeks between the ATM incident and
Swalwell’s arrest, he allegedly set at least six more fires, causing
another $100,000 of damage.

Overall, business owners and residents harbor less blame for
Swalwell than for a deficient social-service system and an arguably
slow investigation by law enforcement.

“I just hope he gets the care that he needs,” says Howard from
Romio’s. Many Greenwood residents are largely grateful to put the
incident behind them.

Leno, the Olive You owner whose restaurant was burned nearly three
months after Swalwell’s handprint was found, is trying to put his
business back together. “I have that void in my life, and I don’t know
how to fill it out. I had this great momentum going in my life, and it
stopped like that. It’s a lot of thinking and worrying, and I have no
control over it.”

Before construction-site machinery showed up in the neighborhood to
shovel remains into several bus-size Dumpsters in late November,
artifacts of pre-fire life lay amid the ruins: dining chairs, the
plastic upholstery bubbled and peeling; a Chinese paper lantern that
miraculously escaped combustion; and a commercial refrigerator that
read “Cold Drinks.”

Just west of the wreckage, Taproot Theatre is out of commission.
It’s had to close for repairs due to, as its website says, “significant
smoke and water damage.” According to Taproot spokeswoman Daytona
Strong, the theater plans to continue its season at different locations
and intends to return to its Greenwood home by late January. For now,
the marquee reads “The Show Goes On.”