Cameraman Testifies in Arson Trial

A freelance video cameraman accused of starting a 5,100-acre Leona Valley wildfire testified Wednesday that detectives repeatedly ignored his requests to check videotape and photos he took that, he says, could have cleared him of suspicion.

Joshua Harville, 23, of Palmdale said detectives investigating the Sept. 3, 2002, blaze had wrongly insisted that he drove a Toyota Camry to the fire and had also told him -- falsely, he says -- there were eyewitnesses to prove it.

“They kept hounding that that was the vehicle I was in,” Harville testified. “I was beginning to doubt what vehicle I was driving to Leona Valley.... I was thinking, ‘Why would they lie?’ ”

Harville was arrested in August for allegedly starting the fire -- which destroyed five homes and caused the evacuation of 200 people -- in a bid to land exclusive TV news footage.

Several local television stations aired some of Harville’s footage, including KCBS, which also interviewed him during the Leona Valley wildfire.

Prosecutors had earlier called fire officials and witnesses who described seeing a vehicle near the fire’s origin that was similar to a Toyota Camry that Harville owns.

A U.S. Forest Service battalion chief testified he saw Harville emerging from brush beside Bouquet Canyon Road minutes before flames appeared there.

During a cross-examination last week, defense attorney Alan Baum said Forest Service Battalion Chief Bruce Schmidt had told investigators he may have noticed flames before he saw Harville.

Harville testified he was dubbing videotapes at the Adelphia Channel’s Antelope Valley office shortly after 1 p.m. when he heard chatter on a police scanner after the wildfire had started.

On the day of the fire, Harville said, he was driving a Ford Crown Victoria, which he had customized to hold about five police scanners to monitor events throughout the county.

Harville said that during an interview 11 months after the fire, he told detectives some of his fire footage showed his Crown Victoria but that they dismissed his claims and reiterated they had witnesses who had taken down his Camry’s license plate number.

On Wednesday, during Harville’s testimony, defense attorney Baum displayed a still image from one of his client’s videos that the defense maintains showed the wildfire framed through the driver’s window of the defendant’s Crown Victoria.

Harville said the image shows a distinctive small tear above the door handle, which, he said, proves he was driving the Crown Victoria the day of the fire.

The prosecutor had few questions about the type of vehicle Harville drove that day.

In a tense cross-examination, Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Jean Daly asked Harville about how quickly he had reached the fire, the color and size of the smoke column he saw, where he went first, and at what time he approached two battalion chiefs who later testified they saw Harville emerging from a brushy area just before flames appeared there.

In several testy interchanges with the prosecutor, a calm but annoyed Harville said he did not have a “minute-to-minute” recollection of every action he took during the fire.

He testified that fire officials who said they saw him coming out of the brush may have been mistaken about the exact time.

Daly tried to portray Harville as someone looking to advance his career, asking him whether the footage he shot of the Leona Valley fire would have helped him land a job for a mainstream news station.

Harville said the footage he took of the fire was not his best work.

“What was captured was not captured as diligently and professionally as I could have,” he said.

Harville testified that he “would have been happy in a different position” with a regular news station, but that he was not actively searching for such a job.

Testimony is scheduled to continue today.