KANSAS CITY, Mo. – A man considered a "person of interest" in a Missouri fire that killed four people was arrested over the weekend after he was found walking naked in northwestern Arizona, authorities said Monday.
The sheriff's office in Yavapai County, Arizona, said the 24-year-old man was arrested Sunday and was jailed on suspicion of theft and displaying a fictitious license plate. Missouri authorities want to question him about the deaths of three adults and an infant in a fire Friday at a rural home near Edgerton, in Platte County.
Authorities are investigating the deaths as possible homicides. They haven't released the victims' names, but family members have identified the victims as relatives of the man arrested in Arizona.
Yavapai County sheriff's spokesman Dwight D'Evelyn said the man gave the wrong date of birth when initially approached by law enforcement. Due to concern about his medical condition, the man was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Flagstaff, D'Evelyn said.
Later Sunday morning, a motel manager reported a suspicious parked car that didn't belong to its guests, D'Evelyn said. He said the car was unlocked and had a key in the ignition, and that it and its license plate had been reported stolen. The man's Missouri identification, which has his real date of birth, was found in a wallet in a pile of clothes next to the car, D'Evelyn said.
Platte County, Missouri, authorities planned to hold a news conference later Monday to discuss what they described as progress in the house fire case. They didn't provide any other information or respond to a phone message seeking comment.
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Associated Press writers Paul Davenport in Phoenix and Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City contributed to this report.
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