WISCASSET

The state fire marshal’s office continues to investigate a suspicious fire which occurred Feb. 11 at a shed near a mobile home on Birch Point Road.

Two Wiscasset men — both residents of the home — were arrested following the fire and charged with burglary and other crimes after police said they discovered evidence that the men had stolen copper piping from nearby homes.

The Wiscasset Fire Department responded to a report of a shed on fire just before 10 p.m. Feb. 11 at Lot 21 of the Mountain View Trailer Park at 285 Birch Point Road, Wiscasset Police Chief Troy A. Cline said Tuesday.

During interviews, one of the occupants of the home, Ronald E. Williams Jr., 41, told police he had been smoking a cigarette in the shed, Cline said. Police and fire officials deemed the fire suspicious and called the state fire marshal’s office to the scene.

“The explanations given for how the fire was started were not consistent with the level of structural damage, as far as we were concerned,” Cline said. “I think the fire department was suspicious as well.”

Also during the investigation, police discovered that Williams and 18-year-old Tylor Miller, who also lived in the mobile home on Lot 21, had allegedly been involved in two separate burglaries of copper piping on Birch Point Road earlier in the evening in the general vicinity of their home, the chief said.

Williams was arrested on Feb. 12 and charged with two counts of burglary, two counts of theft, violations of conditions of release and refusal to submit to arrest or detention — the latter charge because he resisted arrest at the Wiscasset Police Station when he was told he was being placed under arrest, Cline said.

Miller was arrested Feb. 13 and charged with two counts of burglary and two counts of theft.

The American Red Cross was notified to provide assistance to two adults and an infant the night of the fire because windows in the home were broken as the fire was extinguished.

FOR MORE, see the Bangor Daily News at bangordailynews.com.