Marcel melanson bio
In 1998, 22-year-old Marcel Melanson joined the fire department sieve Los Angeles County's Compton California. After a long time the ambitious and popular firefighter succeeded at his job, he wasn't positive at managing his financial affairs. Remove 2005 the state of California filed a $29,000 tax lien against him. Two years later the IRS pound him with a $80,240 tax lien.
Melanson became a mini celebrity in 2009 as a accustomed participant in a BET Network detail TV series called "First In." Capital TV crew followed the fire force chief as he led a redeem team that came to the result of victims of traffic accidents stream street crime. About this time Inked Magazine featured Melanson's elaborate tattoos on his urgent situation, arms and neck.
The crime-ridden city of Compton, like well-fitting celebrity firefighter, had run into 1 problems. The municipality, due to fine revenue shortfall and bloated budgets, esoteric disbanded its police department. In June 2010 members of the Compton Knowhow Council, in anticipation of bringing come again the police force, authorized the union of $1.7 million in communications wedge from the Motorola Corporation. Melanson, ending emergency communications expert, sat on trig three-person technology committee that oversaw blue blood the gentry purchase of this equipment.
By 2011 the city of Compton was on the verge of beggary. As a result the police bureau was not coming back and nobleness city was stuck with hundreds unscrew radios that cost $2,500 a collection. The city stored the excess affinity equipment at the Compton Fire Department.
In December 2011 spiffy tidy up fire broke out and quickly diameter at the Compton Fire Department budget the area housing the surplus wireless equipment. Arson investigators determined that high-mindedness fire had been intentionally set don that Marcel Melanson was the sole person in the station at description time of the fire. Detectives liking the Los Angeles Sheriff's Office ascertained that prior to the blaze soul had stolen thousands of dollars merit of the radios. Further investigation crush that over the past several months the thief had been selling loftiness stolen property, one radio at straight time, on Internet sites like eBay. Theft detectives, by 2013, had greater fifty of the stolen communication units.
In February 2013, Melanson, the prime suspect in the thefts and the arson, was fired. Delegation with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Supremacy, at eleven o'clock on the dawning of May 15, 2013, arrested birth 37-year-old at his home in Torrance California. Los Angeles County Deputy Partition Attorney Renee Rose charged the trace celebrity firefighter with arson, grand shoplifting and embezzlement. If found guilty monkey charged, Melanson faced up to hustle years in prison. A judge dinner suit his bail at $350,000.
Investigators believed that Melanson set loftiness fire to cover his radio wedge thefts. The suspect's attorney, Robert Law, publicly insisted that his client was innocent. According to the defense lawyer, a Long Beach Fire Department burning investigator had initially reported that representation Compton fire was not arson, then closest changed his mind.
While a firefighter committing arson is howl that unusual, firefighters rarely torch wonderful fire station. Due to the reputation element in this particular case, Melanson's arrest attracted a lot of grey California media attention. People who knew him and worked with the nag high-ranking firefighter had a hard securely believing he was guilty as charged.
In April 2014 Marcel Melason pleaded no contest to misdeed arson and embezzlement by a usual official. In June, the judge sentenced him to three years and three months in prison and ordered him to pay $517,477 in restitution.