Pair Who Lit Original Corral Bonfire Get Arraignment Delay

• Cases Continue on Separate Tracks

BY HANS LAETZ

Arraignment for two Culver City men accused of setting the disastrous Corral Canyon fire last fall has been postponed for the third time.
The appointment of a new deputy prosecutor on the case prompted both sides to request a continuation on the case until July 11. At that time, bail will be reviewed and a date for a preliminary hearing, where the charges will be laid out in public, will be set.
Dean Allan Lavorante was 19, and Eric Matthew Ullman was 18 last year, when they allegedly started a small bonfire inside a “rave cave” where Corral Canyon Road dead-ends in the Santa Monica Mountains.
Three Los Angeles men, portrayed by Lavorante and Ullman’s attorneys as “toughs,” arrived at the cave and kicked the Culver City teens and their girlfriends out. The trio then reportedly got drunk and kicked burning logs down a cliff into surrounding brush as hot Santa Ana winds whipped through the area on the weekend after Thanksgiving.
Those men, Brian Allen Anderson, then 23, William Thomas Coppock, then 23, and Brian David Franks, then 27, face a preliminary hearing date-setting on June 10.
Last Friday, Commissioner Michael Kellogg granted Lavorante permission to leave California briefly. He is working on a commercial fishing boat that will leave the state’s waters this summer, said his attorney, Mark Werksman.
Attorneys estimate that $450 million worth of property at 53 houses, as well as numerous outbuildings and vehicles, went up in flames in the eight hours after the bonfire was set.
All five defendants have entered not guilty pleas, and there is the possibility of three or more separate court proceedings if any or all of the five men testify against each other, attorneys said.