Plea Bargain Efforts May Be Underway for Two of the Five Corral Fire Suspects

• Culver City Duo’s Complicity Seen as Separate Scenario

BY HANS LAETZ

A plea bargain may be in the works for two Culver City men who are accused of helping to set the Thanksgiving weekend Corral Fire that burned an estimated half billion dollars in property in Malibu.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed to postpone last Friday’s scheduled arraignment for the pair, Dean Allen Lavorante and Eric Matthew Ullman, because “talks” are being conducted on the case.
Attorneys would not be specifically quoted, but hinted that the case against these two men may be settled with a plea agreement this summer.
Lavorante and Ullman are described by prosecutors as the lesser perpetrators in the chain of events in which two groups of men crossed paths in a cave on the hot, windy night of Nov. 23, when gale-force, 90-degree winds were blowing towards Malibu.
The two Culver City men allegedly took their dates for a romantic bonfire in a notorious party cave at the northern end of Corral Canyon Road, overlooking the San Fernando Valley.
According to trial judge Michael Kellogg, who read a description of the arson investigation at an earlier court hearing, the Culver City men were in the cave with the women when Los Angeles residents Brian Allen Anderson, William Thomas Coppock, and Brian David Franks, arrived and kicked them out.
The three L.A. men are accused of getting drunk, adding cords of wood to the small bonfire, and then kicking burning logs down a cliff into heavy brush, as dry winds raked the area.
At the earlier bail hearing, Judge Kellogg said all five defendants should have known that open fire is prohibited in the fire-prone mountains, and that red flag broadcasts had been made for days before the fire broke out,
The judge, a Malibu resident, also noted that large signs prohibiting fire are located just down the road from the caves.
Kellogg had previously agreed with the Culver City men’s attorneys that the case against Lavorante and Ullman is different from the case against the three other men, who allegedly stoked the initial small fire into a raging inferno.
“There are two separate factual scenarios, I understand that very well,” the judge said last winter.
Lavorante’s lawyer, Ben Pesta II, has said the level of guilt for the two Culver City teens is much less than the other three. “At the very worst this was an act of incaution that had horrible consequences that everyone regrets,” he said.
Despite the varying levels of culpability, all five men are charged with the same crimes: recklessly causing a fire with great bodily injury, recklessly causing a fire to an inhabited structure, and arson during a declared emergency.
All three of those crimes are felonies, each carries a sentence of between 2-4 years in state prison.
All five men are free on bail or personal recognizance pending trial. Anderson, Coppock and Franks are scheduled to have their next court appearance Aug. 5, when a preliminary hearing date will be set.
At the preliminary hearing, the prosecutors will have to present enough evidence to a judge to warrant a trail.
If no plea agreement is reached with Lavorante and Ullman, they face arraignment Aug. 21.
As many as 55 houses in Corral, Latigo and Escondido canyons were gutted in the predawn fire Nov. 24. No official damages total has been released, but $513 million in claims have been presented by residents to government agencies.