The State Fire Marshal’s Office has arrested a former University of Southern Maine student in connection with a dormitory fire on the Gorham campus in the fall of 2012, according to a press release from Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman Stephen McCausland.

Thomas Williams, 23, was arrested Monday at his home in Mexico and charged with two counts of arson, according to the release.

Williams had been indicted earlier this month by a Cumberland County grand jury, McCausland reported on Tuesday.

McCausland said the fire on Sept. 3, 2012, started in a recycling closet in Upton-Hastings Hall at about 2:30 a.m.

“More than 200 students were in the building at the time, and no one was injured,” McCausland reported.

The building’s sprinkler system extinguished the fire. Williams was a student at the time of the fire and later left the university, McCausland reported.

An American Journal article following the fire said the dormitory, built in 1960, sustained some damage from water that seeped into some dorm rooms and a first-floor lounge

Also at that time, Deputy Gorham Fire Chief Ken Fickett reported that response to the fire cost an estimated $400-$500 in labor.

This week in McCausland’s report, State Fire Marshal Joe Thomas said the federal agency – Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives – assisted the investigation with a computer-generated re-enactment of the fire, and a mock fire of a replica of the closet at the agency’s laboratory in Beltsville, Md. The USM Police Department also assisted investigators.

Williams was transported to the Cumberland County Jail and will make his first court appearance this week in Cumberland County Superior Court.

Thomas Wiliams