Couple’s adopted son accused of trying to kill them

Gage and Katie Jordan of Conway have received widespread support after their adopted 17-year-old son was arrested and charged Sept. 6 in Faulkner County Circuit Court with two counts of attempted capital murder and one count of arson after allegedly setting fires in and outside their home on Aug. 26 while the couple slept. Katie is 16 weeks pregnant.
Gage and Katie Jordan of Conway have received widespread support after their adopted 17-year-old son was arrested and charged Sept. 6 in Faulkner County Circuit Court with two counts of attempted capital murder and one count of arson after allegedly setting fires in and outside their home on Aug. 26 while the couple slept. Katie is 16 weeks pregnant.

CONWAY — Gage Jordan said goodnight to his 17-year-old adopted son on Aug. 25, told him he loved him and went to bed.

Jordan said the smell of smoke woke him up a couple of hours later, and he and his pregnant wife, Katie, found their son was missing, and fires had been set inside and outside their Conway home.

The teenager, Titus Jordan, was arrested Aug. 26 and has been accused of trying to kill the couple by setting the fires.

Titus is charged as an adult in Faulkner County Circuit Court with two felony counts of attempted capital murder and one felony count of arson.

Detective Hayden Schmitt of the Conway Police Department said in the arrest affidavit that Titus admitted to starting a fire in the kitchen, to pouring gasoline on the exterior of the exits of the house and to starting the fires outside his bedroom window and on the front porch.

Titus is in the Faulkner County Juvenile Detention Center in lieu of $250,000 bond. A pretrial hearing is scheduled for Oct. 28, according to online court records. The court approved a no-contact order that bars Titus from contacting the couple.

The Jordans, who fostered the teenager before adopting him in October 2018, and are working with the Arkansas Department of Human Services to relinquish their parental rights, Gage said.

“We are physically healthy; we are emotionally going through a lot,” he said. “It’s a weird mixture between a death and a divorce.”

Gage, 32, is a growth strategist at Dave Creek Media in Conway and an intern at Christ Church Conway while going through seminary to be ordained through the Presbyterian Church in America. Katie Jordan, 33, is a speech pathologist in the Guy-Perkins School District, where Titus is a senior.

She has taken a leave of absence, and Gage said Guy-Perkins administrators and co-workers have been “super supportive” of her.

The couple’s insurance company has denied their claim because of the fire being determined as arson set by a family member. The Jordans are appealing the claim denial.

Daniel Tyler, founder and executive director of Deliver Hope, a nonprofit organization for at-risk youth in Conway, and Lori Melton, who works with Gage Jordan at Dave Creek Media, set up a Go Fund Me account for the couple. The $25,000 goal was reached within four days.

Tyler said he was not surprised by the outpouring.

“This community is incredibly generous. Ever since we started Deliver Hope, it’s been one thing after another. This community steps up and fights for what is important,” he said.

“We’ve been absolutely overwhelmed and appreciative,” Gage Jordan said. “I don’t know if there are enough words to describe our gratitude.

“Christ Church Conway has been amazing. My co-workers have been amazing, the city of Conway and the citizens and their friends, and their friends. I literally got messages and people sending me money all throughout the weekend, some people I didn’t even know. We owe an incredible amount of indebtedness.”

Jordan said he and his wife, who will celebrate their ninth wedding anniversary in November, tried to have children for years without success. He said they had talked about fostering and adopting when they were dating.

“It wasn’t a substitute,” he said of adopting versus having a biological child.

They fostered through The CALL (Children of Arkansas Loved for a Lifetime) of Conway and Faulkner counties, a faith-based, nonprofit organization that recruits foster families through churches.

Jordan said they opened their home for fosters in February 2018 and had 11 placements over nine months. Some children stayed for a day, some for months, and they were mostly teenagers. “That was kind of our drive and passion,” Jordan said.

When Titus was placed with the couple in March 2018, his parents’ rights had already been terminated, Jordan said. He said the couple had decided to adopt if the opportunity presented itself, “and it looked like it was a good fit.”

Titus was 16 at the time and had been through trauma, Jordan said. Titus was receiving counseling and he had run away before, but there was no indication that he would do something like what he is charged with, Jordan said.

“There were a lot of things he did that were typical teenager, a lot of behaviors that were common to kids with trauma, but [no] red flags. He’d never been violent; he’d never hurt my dog; he’d never punched a hole in the wall; he’d never started fires,” Jordan said. “Nothing alarming.”

However, Jordan said, Titus “struggled a lot with attachment. … He’d been in and out of care most of his life, so I don’t know that he understood attachment in general. Kids with attachment issues struggle. It comes in waves …. It’s one step forward, three steps back.”

He said Titus seemed to have a good relationship with Katie. Her pregnancy was a happy surprise, and they told Titus first.

“He was super excited and also super anxious,” Jordan said. “He’d grown up with a lot of siblings, and I thought he missed having them. We told him, ‘Hey, you’re not being replaced; this is an addition. You’re going to be a big brother.’ We actually made him a shirt that said ‘#Big Brother.’”

Titus had known about Katie’s pregnancy for about six weeks before the fires.

On Aug. 25, the day before the early-morning smoke forced the Jordans from their home, Gage Jordan said he had preached at a Little Rock church, and the couple and Titus had gone to lunch with friends. That afternoon, the Jordans had been at their relatives’ home in Conway playing board games and hanging out, he said.

They got home at 10:30 or 11 p.m., Jordan said.

Jordan said he gave Titus his medication.

“I told him I loved him,” Jordan said. “He said he loved me.”

Jordan said he then checked to make sure the doors were locked and the burners were off on the stove, just like Jordan said his mother used to do at bedtime.

He said he heard Titus stirring about midnight, and he thought Titus might be taking a shower. He said he considered getting up and telling Titus to go to bed, “but I thought, ‘He’s a senior; I’m not going to fight this battle tonight.’”

About 1 a.m., Jordan said, he woke up and smelled smoke.

“I came out of the bedroom, went to the kitchen. There was a washcloth on the electric cooktop, and the burner was on. I ran into [Titus’] room and saw his window was open. He was gone, and the house was filled with smoke,” he said.

Jordan woke up Katie and got their puppy; then Jordan said he ran throughout the house looking for Titus to make sure he wasn’t unconscious or hurt.

The couple opened their front door, and the doormat was on fire. Katie stomped on the fire, Jordan said, and went outside. A woman was standing in the street, and she told them she’d been to get gas in her vehicle when she saw the fire. She’d already called 911, Jordan said.

“She said, ‘Your house is still on fire,” and pointed to the side of it, Jordan said. A plastic chair, pushed up next to the house under Titus’ bedroom window, was on fire and charring the siding.

Katie got a water hose and sprayed it until the Conway Fire Department arrived, Jordan said.

District Chief Jeff Moix of the Conway Fire Department said in his report that there was burn damage to the siding above and below the window, the floor mat and post on the front porch had been ignited, and there was a strong odor of gasoline at the exterior exits.

Officer Wesley Pence reported that he found a cardboard box leaned up in the hallway that was covered with an oily substance, and the couple said the box wasn’t like that when they went to bed.

Jordan said the gas can that he uses to fill the lawn mower was missing from their shed.

The Jordans also realized as police investigated that Titus had taken most of his clothes and a PlayStation 4 from the living room. The couple told officers that Titus had run away once before to a friend’s house, but when the officers went to the friend’s home after the fire, Titus wasn’t there.

Jordan said the police and fire responders left about 4:30 a.m., and he and Katie went to a hotel. Later that morning, a woman at the First United Methodist Church, which is adjacent to the Jordans’ home, saw someone hiding a suitcase behind a dumpster at the church. When she called out to him, he went inside the Jordans’ house, according to the affidavit.

Police were notified and arrested Titus when he answered the door, Jordan said.

Schmitt said in the affidavit that Titus’ story changed during his interview with police, but he admitted starting the fires and pouring gasoline on the exterior exits of the house with the intent to burn down the house.

“He stated that he was upset because his parents did not come looking for him on Friday night [two nights before the fire] when he ran away and that he wanted them to be emotionally hurt like him. His plan was to light himself on fire after he lit the house on fire, but he could not go through with it,” the detective wrote in the affidavit.

Titus said he wanted his parents “to see him on fire and feel emotional pain from that sight,” Schmitt wrote.

Jordan said he wouldn’t necessarily characterize Titus as running away on Friday night before the incident, as the teenager had told the detective, because the teenager came back home that night. Jordan said he and Katie were going to dinner and told Titus to text them if he wanted to go hang out with friends. The teenager sent a text that he wasn’t feeling well, he was going to bed and “please don’t come in my room and disturb me,” Jordan said.

Thinking that was odd, the Jordans went home to check on Titus, and his window was up and he was gone, but his cellphone was there. The last two text messages were to Titus’ best friend, asking when the friend got off work, and to a girl, and Jordan said they assumed Titus was with them.

Jordan said Titus came home a couple of hours later and said he had been crying in the bushes outside. Jordan said he told Titus he knew that wasn’t true, because he had previously walked the perimeter of the house, and Titus wasn’t there.

“In his mind, he may have thought he ran away,” Jordan said.

Gage Jordan said he also realized the day after the fire that the smoke alarms hadn’t gone off, and he had Schmitt go with him to the home. The batteries were missing from Titus’ bedroom smoke detector and one in the hallway, and Jordan said he found the batteries in the kitchen trash can.

Schmitt reported that he went back to the Jordans’ residence after the interview with Titus and found a journal that appeared to be written by Titus. It said that that he was unhappy living with the Jordans and “how he wished they would die” so he could live with a friend, according to the affidavit.

Gage Jordan said he and Titus for months had talked about healthy emotions, and he gave Titus that journal and suggested he express his feelings in writing. “I told him I won’t read it unless you want me to,” Jordan said.

Jordan said he wants Titus to get additional mental-health services as soon as possible.

“He’s existing in a reality that we’re not existing in,” Jordan said.

Jordan also said this experience is not typical of fostering and adoption.

“We’ve had several teenagers, some who are doing well as adults now. I help with the Conway Noon Rotary Club’s adoption picnic they do every year. I can tell you 75 percent of the kids who showed up were teenagers. There’s a humongous need for people to take a chance with teenagers,” he said. “Is there a chance that some of them are in need of professional help? Absolutely. You have to take the information given and decide.”

Jordan said restoration is underway on the couple’s 1,800-square-foot home. The Go Fund me account will pay for the restoration and repairs, as well as give Katie the ability to take as much time off as she needs to heal emotionally, Jordan said.

He said Katie is not doing interviews, and he is trying to protect her as much as possible from stress.

Jordan said Katie already had a doctor’s appointment scheduled the day after the fire, and they told the doctor what had happened. He said the doctor told Katie, “Babies are resilient; things are OK. The biggest thing is you take care of yourself.”

The Jordans’ baby is due March 9.

“We’re a couple of weeks away from a gender reveal,” Jordan said last week.

He said it’s too soon to say whether he and Katie will ever foster or adopt again.

“As of right now, we’re content with the family the Lord has given us. We will discern the will of the Lord in any future family growth,” he said.

Asked what else the couple need, Jordan said, “Prayer would be great; we’re going to continue to move forward.”

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-5671 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.

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