BOULDER — Convicted arsonist Ondrace Stephen Carey testified Tuesday that his former friend Tyler Ross Callanan sprayed lighter fluid on the life vests and cabinets at Lafayette’s Waneka Lake boathouse.
Callanan, 21, of Lafayette, also didn’t protest when Carey used a lighter to start the blaze that destroyed the popular boathouse in October 2007, Carey said.
Callanan — charged with first-degree arson, criminal mischief and conspiracy after his arrest last April — is standing trial this week in Boulder County District Court.
Carey, a 22-year-old from Lafayette, was sentenced to 10 years of probation after reaching a plea deal with prosecutors last year. He pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degrees arson — for the boathouse fire as well as a separate blaze that destroyed the 142-year-old caboose in Boulder’s Central Park.
Prosecutor Michael Foote emphasized that Carey’s plea agreement was not dependent on him naming Callanan as an accomplice, noting that prosecutors asked for a year in jail with work-release privileges.
The judge in the case imposed probation instead, along with requiring him to pay restitution.
Carey said he confessed, despite advice from Callanan’s father to “lay low,” because “I felt like this whole situation was just bigger than I was.”
Carey testified that he, Callanan and a third friend who didn’t participate in starting the fire weren’t planning to cause mischief, but simply took the Waneka Lake trail as a shortcut on their way home from a party.
“It was a pretty ridiculous act of immaturity and flat out stupidity,” Carey said.
Read the rest of Carey’s testimony at .
