Holly Hill, FL – A Port Orange man is held on $75,000 bond after police charge him with setting his estranged wife’s apartment on fire, killing 3 of her pets.
34-year-old Michael J. La Rosae remains in custody at Volusia County Jail as of 7pm Thursday following his first court appearance earlier in the day.
The Holly Hill Police Department has charged La Rosae with arson, animal cruelty and criminal mischief in an incident last August at the State Avenue apartment he used to share with his estranged wife.
According to the incident report, Holly Hill firefighters were called out to the apartment just before midnight on August 22nd to put out a blaze at the apartment, finding 2 dead dogs and a dead snake inside.
An investigator with the Florida Fire Marshal’s Office determined that whoever started the fire cut up clothes belonging to La Rosae’s estranged wife and used that to start at least 2 separate fires in the apartment’s living room and a bedroom.
The flames caused around $25,000 in damage and also caused enough smoke to led to the death of the dogs as they sat locked in crates as well as the snake, according to the arrest report.
Among the clothes found cut up and burned in the apartment was lingerie purchased 10 days earlier from Victoria’s Secret, which investigators think might’ve been what caused La Rosae to go into a rage and set the fire when he went into the apartment that night.
According to the arrest report, La Rosae’s estranged wife claimed she had kicked him out of the home earlier that month because he had gotten physical with her after refusing to take his bipolar medication.
She also claimed he showed up to her job on the night of the fire and kept asking her where her wedding ring was before she got him to leave.
The report also notes that police were called out to her job – a bar in Ormond-by-the-Sea – around 2:30am when La Rosea returned to the bar’s parking lot and sat next to his estranged wife’s car.
A friend of La Rosea’s told investigators he drove La Rosea to his estranged wife’s apartment at his request on the night of the fire but that he didn’t know about the fire until the following day.
The arrest report didn’t note if La Rosae gave his side of the story to investigators.
Michael J. La Rosae (mugshot courtesy VCJ)
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