Man Gets 5 Years in Prison For Arson

A Maine judge has handed down a five-year prison sentence to a suspect in one of three major fires in Lewiston in span of less than two weeks last year.

Thirty-one-year-old Brian Morin of Lewiston was sentenced Wednesday in Superior Court in Auburn. He pleaded guilty to three felony arson charges in June.

Three fires in late April and early May last year destroyed nine buildings and displaced about 200 residents. The blazes put people in downtown Lewiston on edge.

Morin and Bryan Wood of Lewiston were accused of setting a fire that burned down two vacant apartment buildings, because they were fed up with dilapidated and abandoned housing. Two 12-year-old boys were accused of setting the other two fires.

Cases against Wood and one of the boys were dismissed.