Tehachapi News

Depot fire defendants 'held to answer,'

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The two Tehachapi men charged in the June 13 fire that destroyed the historic railroad depot will be re-arraigned Oct. 10 in Bakersfield on a felony charge of causing a structure fire.

In a preliminary hearing Sept. 26 at Superior Court East Kern Branch in Mojave, Judge John Oglesby concluded there is enough evidence on that one count to hold Jason Watson and Brian O'Donnell over for trial.

He dismissed a misdemeanor charge of selling and using illegal fireworks, citing insufficient cause.

The defendants will enter a plea on Oct. 10 and a trial date will be set.

An arson investigator for the Kern County Fire Department testified at the preliminary hearing. The attorneys for the defendants had no comment following the preliminary hearing. The arson investigation office would not comment, citing possible contamination of the jury pool.

At the site of the burned depot, a group of men from Friends of the Depot for weeks have been scraping and cleaning old bricks unearthed by machines clearing out dirt and debris preparing for renewed construction. The bricks were part of the original foundation and pilasters that are more than 100 years old.

The site now reveals strata that tell the history of the depot. At the lowest level are the bricks, then remnants of charred wood from the first depot fire in 1904, then a black layer of soil that accumulated during the flood decades of the 1930s and 1940s. On top of that layer is three feet of fill that was placed on the site to hold the depot when it was raised off the ground to get above the floodwaters. The fill made the land higher than the surrounding streets.

The bricks possibly will be used in a walkway for the rebuilt depot. The men, after laboriously chipping off old concrete from the bricks, have salvaged more than a pallette of the old foundation material.