A 31-year-old Saint Paul man is facing a first-degree arson charge after prosecutors say he poured accelerant at the threshold of a neighbor's apartment door and set it on fire, forcing the resident to escape through a window as flames spread inside. Keeveion Arneal Mack was charged on October 27 in Ramsey County District Court in connection with the fire, which happened on the 1200 block of Herbert Street.
According to the complaint detailed by MN Crime, officers responded at about 6:45 a.m. on July 9 after the victim called 911 to report a fire inside his apartment. The man told investigators he had been doing music work when his smoke alarms sounded, and that he went to the kitchen before seeing flames coming from under his apartment door. Unable to get out through the door, he escaped through a window.
A Chair Propped Against the Door
The complaint states the victim had recently reported being assaulted in the hallway outside his apartment by a man he knew only as Kilo, and said the encounter had left him paranoid about people coming to his door. On the day of the fire, he had propped a chair against the door, according to the complaint recounted by the same outlet. A fire investigator determined that an accelerant had been used to ignite the threshold, and that the fire spread inside the unit and caught the propped chair on fire, ultimately pushing flames into the apartment and forcing the resident out the window.
Surveillance footage reviewed by investigators reportedly showed a Black male standing about 6 feet tall and weighing roughly 170 pounds, dressed in a blue sweatshirt, a purple undershirt and jeans, carrying a plastic silver canister with a yellow cap. The video allegedly showed him approaching the victim's apartment door multiple times before pouring liquid from the canister at the threshold and igniting it. The report notes that the ignition was bright enough to wash out the camera footage, and that the fire appeared to burn the suspect's leg before he ran away.
Cell Phone Searches and a Building Connection
Investigators identified the man seen in the video as Kilo, and a woman who lived in the building reportedly told police she knew Kilo as Keeveion Mack and that he used her address to receive mail, adding that Mack still visited her apartment occasionally. Investigators also said Mack had been staying in the same apartment building as the victim.
A search warrant for Mack's cell phone turned up what investigators described as more than 100 searches related to power boxes and power outages on Maryland Avenue and at Maryland apartments, dated to July 7 — two days before the fire, per the same account. Mack now faces the first-degree arson charge stemming from the incident.
What the Court Record Does and Doesn't Show
Minnesota's court records system offers a note of caution for anyone trying to track the case independently. Minnesota Court Records Online states plainly that the information it provides is not the official court case record, but rather a service to the public. The system also warns that pending criminal cases without a conviction will not surface in a search by defendant name, though they will appear if searched by case number, and that the case type listed in search results does not establish a case's final outcome.
Minnesota's first-degree arson statute, cited under section 609.561, addresses the intentional use of fire or explosives involving a dwelling, according to the Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. No additional case numbers, hearing dates, or plea information were available at the time of this report.
