Worker who set fire to sub sentenced to 17 years
By The Associated Press
This article was published March 15, 2013 at 11:04 a.m.
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PHOTO BY AP/DOVER POLICE DEPARTMENT, FILE
Casey Fury is seen in a file booking photo provided by the Dover, N.H., Police Department.
PORTLAND, Maine — A shipyard worker who set fire to rags aboard a nuclear submarine because he wanted to go home was sentenced to a little more than 17 years in federal prison Friday for the blaze that transformed the vessel into a fiery furnace, injured seven people and caused about $450 million in damage.
Casey James Fury also was ordered to pay $400 million in restitution by a judge who weighed his lack of criminal record and the severity of the fire before imposing a 205-month prison sentence.
The 25-year-old Fury, formerly of Portsmouth, N.H., pleaded guilty to setting the May 23 fire while the USS Miami was undergoing a 20-month dry dock overhaul at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery.
The civilian painter and sand blaster told authorities that he wanted to go home because he was suffering from an anxiety attack. He told them he never envisioned such extensive damage when he used a lighter to set fire to a plastic bag of rags that he left on a bunk in a state room.
The blaze quickly grew into an inferno spewing superheated smoke that billowed from hatches. It took 12 hours and the efforts of more than 100 firefighters to save the submarine. Seven people were hurt, the Navy has said.
Read tomorrow's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.
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Firefighter says... March 15, 2013 at 12:38 p.m.
$400,000,000 in restitution? Is the judge nuts? I doubt he could/would pay $40,000 in restitution.
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