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Sam Penrod Reporting A Utah County jury convicted a Hurricane Katrina victim of Arson.
For most of the day, a jury in Provo deliberated the case of a Hurricane Katrina evacuee, accused of aggravated arson. Herbert Landry was accused of setting fire to his Provo apartment building the day he was supposed to be kicked out. The jury began deliberating late this morning, and just after 8pm, the jury returned a guilty verdict.
The jury heard two days of evidence in the case, as prosecutors tried to prove that Landry intentionally set fire to his apartment. This, despite the defense claiming that Landry was rebuilding his life after Katrina and had, once again, lost everything he owned in a disaster.
Back in February of this year Landry became the prime suspect in a fire on a Sunday afternoon at an apartment complex in Provo. The fire destroyed several units as well as the property of several other residents and left them out in the cold.
Landry was suspected because fire investigators determined the blaze started in his unit. It was very suspicious because Landry had been evicted and was to be out of the apartment that night.
He was nowhere to be found after the fire, and just before 10:00 that night, he approached Eyewitness News at the scene, asking us what was going on.
That's when police took him into custody, leading up to this week's trial.
Landry was brought to Utah last fall after he was evacuated from the destruction in Louisiana from Hurricane Katrina. Today, Landry took the witness stand in his own defense, saying there was someone else in his apartment who started the fire and that he was at a hotel at the time the fire started.
The jury got the case at 11:30 this morning.
