A La Puebla man, who allegedly twice set fire to the house he shared with his mother, is wanted on a nationwide warrant charging him with two counts of arson.
The house burned twice on Nov. 7 and Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Detective Ian Burr sought an arrest warrant for Harvey Arellano, 40, three days later, on Nov. 10.
Burr wrote in an affidavit for an arrest warrant that Arellano is believed to have set fire to the home in two separate parts of the house in the morning, then came back to the house that evening, after firefighters left, and set it on fire a second time, evidenced by surveillance footage showing a man fleeing from the house after a “large burst of fire occurred in the residence.”
Arellano is wanted on two counts of arson causing more than $20,000 in damage, both second-degree felonies, with a maximum sentence of nine years each, or 18 years in total.
Arellano’s mother told police that her son hears voices, which tell him to “do things,” and has a history of lighting things on fire, Burr wrote.
The First Fire
When Arellano’s mother, Betty Lopez, and her boyfriend, Bill Ortiz, left their house at 9 a.m. that morning, Arellano was praying. She noticed burnt foil in his room, not a surprise, as she told detectives she allows him to smoke fentanyl in his room when no one else is home, Burr wrote.
When she got to Rio Rancho, she checked the surveillance cameras, around 10:42 a.m., the screen was gray. At first, she thought Arellano covered the cameras but then realized it was smoke. She tried to call Ortiz, who she couldn’t reach until an hour later at 11:48 a.m. Between the smoke discovery and getting ahold of the boyfriend, Arellano called her and said he was hanging out with a friend who lived on State Road 76, Burr wrote.
Ortiz got to the house around 12:09 p.m. He didn’t see any flames, but smelled smoke and felt heat. He got the animals out of the house and called 911. Once the fire was put out, State Fire Marshal investigators determined two fires were set: one in Arellano’s bedroom and the other in another bedroom, he wrote.
“Based on the preliminary investigation an unknown open flame device came into contact with normal clothing and construction combustibles,” Burr wrote. “(Fire Investigator Justin Turpin) believes due to the two separate areas of origin separated by distance an incendiary caused by human action occurred.”
Lopez told Burr she thought her son was responsible because of his history of starting fires and because he often “hears voices that tell him to do things,” Burr wrote.
Burr researched calls to the address and noted a history of “psychiatric abnormal behavior calls, suspicious person or activity, criminal damage to property, assist fire department, and structure fire calls,” he wrote.
Among the calls were one where Lopez, in April 2024, told deputies her son set the recliner on fire and was on drugs, but she wouldn’t complete a report, but would if he did it again. In another call from May 2024, she told deputies her son pulled a mattress out of the house and set it on fire, but deputies couldn’t find the fire, he wrote.
Coming Back
At 7:17 p.m., the night of the fire, a 911 call came in for a structure fire at the same house that had already burned. Deputies tried to find Arellano, but couldn’t. A neighbor’s house had surveillance cameras that showed a man “matching the description of Harvey Arellano with long hair running from the residence after a large burst of fire occurred in the residence,” Burr wrote.
Flames engulfed the interior of the house, coming out of the front door and side window and the man was seen running to a sedan and leaving the area, he wrote.
One past arrest for Arellano in 2015 was for drug possession, pleaded down to misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia.